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Overholt's clever mouth twitched. "It's much safer, my boy. Almost all historians have found it so." "There! I said so to-day, and now you say just the same thing. I don't believe one word of ancient history. Not one word! They wrote it about their own nations, didn't they? All right.
It may seem still stranger that, on the books, Overholt's account showed that it had been balanced by a deposit exactly equal to the deficit, made by the partner himself, instead of by crediting the amount of the note. But Overholt never knew this, for a pass-book had always been a mystery to him, and made his head ache.
There was food and a small provision for the immediate present. And here, upon that wild March night of screaming wind and sleet, and with only Aunt Cornelia as doctor and nurse, Huldy's child was born. And now a new order of things began. Sammy's energies appeared to be devoted to the thwarting of Pap Overholt's care and benefits.
"Oh, my po' chile, my po' little Huldy! Whar? His own place! My law! whar? Whar has he drug that little soul?" An intuition flashed into Pap Overholt's mind. He grasped his wife's arm. "W'y, Cornely," he cried, "hit's that cabin on The Bench! Don't ye know, honey? I give him that land when he was sixteen year old, time he brung the prize home from the school down in the settlemint." "The Bench!
The food, the raiment, everything had to be smuggled into the house little by little, explained, apologized for. The land on The Bench was rich alluvial soil. The baby thrived, unconscious of all the grief, the perverse cruelty, the baffled, defeated tenderness about her, and was the light of Pap Overholt's doting eyes, the delight of Aunt Cornelia's heart.
When she was eighteen months old, and could toddle about and run to meet them, and chattered that wonderful language which these two hearts of love had all their lives yearned to hear the dialect of babyhood, the twin boys came to the cabin on The Bench. And Pap Overholt's lines were harder than ever. Cornelia had sterner stuff in her. She would have called a halt.
Overholt's instrument took its place in every laboratory in the world; but the mechanic's labour-saving utensil took its place in every house. It was on the strength of the valuable tool of science that Mr. Burnside had invested two thousand dollars in the Air-Motor without really having the smallest idea whether it was to be a machine that would move the air, or was to be moved by it.
Indoors the fire is glowing on the wide hearth, a great bed of coals that will last all night, because it is not bitter weather, but only clear and cold and still, as it should be; or if there is only a poor stove, like Overholt's, the wide door is open, and a comfortable and cheery red light shines out from within upon the battered iron plate and the wooden floor beyond; and the older people sit round it, not saying much, but thinking with their hearts rather than with their heads; but small boys and girls know that interesting things have been happening in the kitchen all the afternoon, and are rather glad that the supper was not very good, because there will be the more room for good things to-morrow; and the grown-ups and the children have made up any little differences of opinion they may have had before supper-time, because Good Will must reign, and reign alone, like Alexander; so that there is nothing at all to regret, and nothing hurts anybody any more, and they are all happy in just wishing for King Christmas to open the door softly and make them all great people in his kingdom.
A number of business men had done the same thing. Then, at a political dinner in a club, three of the investors had dined at the same small table, and in an interval between the dull speeches, one of the three told the others that he had looked into the invention and that there was nothing in Overholt's motor after all. Overholt was crazy. "It's like this," he had said.
Overholt's boy came home from school at the usual hour with his books buckled together in an old skate strap, which had never been very good because the leather was too soft and tore from one hole to the next; but it served very well for the books, as no great strain was caused by an arithmetic thumbed to mushiness, a history in the same state, and a geography of which the binding gave in and doubled up from sheer weariness, while the edges were so worn that the eastern coast of China and Siberia had quite disappeared.
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