nd the
old ink dissolved readily from the platen and roller. Bobby took note
that he should have cleared them the day before, as a night's neglect
had left them sticky. With it all he seemed to have arrived at a dead
wall. All his limited mechanical ingenuity was exhausted and still the
letters printed either too deep or too light. About half-past nine he
cleaned up and went down to the Ottawa.

His friends there were all sitting under the trees before the hotel,
resting rather vacantly after a hard romp. Celia perched high on a root,
her curls against the brown bark, her hat dangling by its elastic from a
forefinger, her lips parted, her eyes vacant. Gerald leaned gracefully
against the trunk. Bobby sat cross-legged on the ground watching
her--and him. Kitty and Margaret reclined flat on their backs, gazing up
through the leaves. Morris alone showed a trace of activity. He had
fished from his pockets the short, blunt stub of a pencil, a penny and a
piece of tissue paper. The latter he had superimposed over the penny and
by rubbing with the pencil was engaged in making a tracing of the
pattern on the coin. Through his preoccupation Bobby at last became
cognizant of this process. He sat and watched it with increasing
interest.

"By Jimmy!" he shouted leaping to his feet.

"What is it?" they cried, startled by the abrupt movement.

"I got to go home," said Bobby.

They expostulated vehemently, for his departure spoiled the even number
for a game. But he would not listen, even to Celia's reproachful voice.

"I'll be back after lunch," he called, and departed rapidly. Duke arose
from his warm corner, stretched deliberately, yawned, glanced at the
children, half wagged his tail and finally trotted after.

Bobby rushed home as fast as he could; broke into the house like a
whirlwind; tore upstairs and, breathless with speed and the excitement
of a new idea, flung himself into the chair before his little table. He
had seen the solution. To the flash of embryonic creative instinct
vouchsafed him, Morris's penny had represented type, the inequalities of
its design were the inequalities of alignment over which he had
struggled so long and the pressure of the pencil and tissue paper
paralleled the imposition of the card on the letters. But in the case of
Morris's penny the type did not conform to the paper and the pressure,
_the paper conformed to the type_.

His brain afire with eagerness, Bobby first stretched several cl