"You’d better do it now, while this feeling about being a collector for the Missionary is on you. It will soon pass off, and then you won’t want to give them back."
"To show you how I did feel before hearing the Drug Missionary, Pratt, I may tell you I had an idea of taking the glasses home next holidays, and buying a new glazier’s diamond and writing on the glasses the bitter words, ’THOU SHALT NOT STEAL,’ and then returning them to his desk next term. But there are two very good reasons why I shall not do that. One is this strong pro-missionary feeling in me, and the other is that, if I did, Dunston would guess to a dead certainty who had done it, knowing only too well what I can do in the matter of writing on glass."
"He would," I told Tudor. "So the sooner you put them back unharmed, the better."
"I shall," said Tudor, "and I’m going to return them in a very peculiar way. I am going to hide them in a certain place, and then I am going to write an anonymous letter to Dunston, telling him they are in that place."
"Why make it so beastly complicated? Besides, anonymous letters are often traced by skilled detectives, and if it was found you wrote it, where are you then?"
"I have no fear about that, because the letter will all be carefully printed; and my reason for writing a letter at all is to explain to him that the Unknown, who took his glasses away, is sorry."
"What on earth does that matter to him?" I said.
"It matters to me," explained Tudor. "As you know, that Drug Missionary made a great impression upon me, and I have come to be very sick with myself that I did this thing. Of course, I am not nearly sick enough to give the show away and tell Dunston I did it, but I am sick enough to say I am sorry, and I want him to know it--anonymously."
Well, this was beyond me, and I told Tudor so. He then said:
"Sometimes, Pratt, people don’t pay quite enough income tax; but presently there comes a feeling over them that they have defrauded the innocent and trustful Government, and their hearts are softened--I dare say often by a missionary, like mine was--and then they send five-pound notes by great stealth to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and feel better. And their consciences are quickly cured. But they take jolly good care not to send their names, because they know that, if they did, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would go much further, and, far from rewarding them for their conduct, would very likely want more still, and never trust them again about their incomes, and persecute them to their dying day. And it’s like that with me."