aid. And after two or three mouthfuls, he added, "I guess I
ain't hungry to-night."

He dropped the spoon, shoved back his chair, and arose wearily from the
table.

"An' I guess I'll go to bed."

His feet dragged more heavily than usual as he crossed the kitchen
floor. Undressing was a Titan's task, a monstrous futility, and he wept
weakly as he crawled into bed, one shoe still on. He was aware of a
rising, swelling something inside his head that made his brain thick and
fuzzy. His lean fingers felt as big as his wrist, while in the ends of
them was a remoteness of sensation vague and fuzzy like his brain.
The small of his back ached intolerably. All his bones ached. He ached
everywhere. And in his head began the shrieking, pounding, crashing,
roaring of a million looms. All space was filled with flying shuttles.
They darted in and out, intricately, amongst the stars. He worked a
thousand looms himself, and ever they speeded up, faster and faster, and
his brain unwound, faster and faster, and became the thread that fed the
thousand flying shuttles.

He did not go to work next morning. He was too busy weaving colossally
on the thousand looms that ran inside his head. His mother went to work,
but first she sent for the doctor. It was a severe attack of la grippe,
he said. Jennie served as nurse and carried out his instructions.

It was a very severe attack, and it was a week before Johnny dressed and
tottered feebly across the floor. Another week, the doctor said, and he
would be fit to return to work. The foreman of the loom room visited him
on Sunday afternoon, the first day of his convalescence. The best weaver
in the room, the foreman told his mother. His job would be held for him.
He could come back to work a week from Monday.

"Why don't you thank 'im, Johnny?" his mother asked anxiously.

"He's ben that sick he ain't himself yet," she explained apologetically
to the visitor.

Johnny sat hunched up and gazing steadfastly at the floor. He sat in the
same position long after the foreman had gone. It was warm outdoors,
and he sat on the stoop in the afternoon. Sometimes his lips moved. He
seemed lost in endless calculations.

Next morning, after the day grew warm, he took his seat on the stoop. He
had pencil and paper this time with which to continue his calculations,
and he calculated painfully and amazingly.

"What comes after millions?" he asked at noon, when Will came home from
school. "An' how d'ye wor