been a good position, and he had married a clever New England girl, the
daughter of his predecessor, who had died suddenly. They had been very
happy together for years, and one boy had been born to them, whom his
father insisted on christening Newton. Then Overholt had thrown up his
employment for the sake of getting freedom to perfect his invention,
though much against his wife's advice, for she was a prudent little
woman, besides being clever, and she thought of the future of the two
beings she loved, and of her own, while her husband dreamed of hastening
the progress of science.

Overholt came to New York because he could work better there than
elsewhere, and could get better tools made, and could obtain more easily
the materials he wanted. For a time everything went well enough, but
when the investors began to lose faith in him things went very badly.

Then Mrs. Overholt told her husband that two could live where three
could not, especially when one was a boy of twelve; and as she would not
break his heart by teasing him into giving up the invention as a matter
of duty, she told him that she would support herself until it was
perfected or until he abandoned it of his own accord. She was very well
fitted to be a governess; she was thirty years old and as strong as a
pony, she said, and she had friends in New England who could find her a
situation. He should see her whenever it was possible, she added, but
there was no other way.

Now it is not easy to find a thoroughly respectable married governess
of unexceptionably good manners, who comes of a good stock and is able
to teach young ladies. Such a person is a treasure to rich people who
need somebody to take charge of their girls while they fly round and
round the world in automobiles, seeking whom they may destroy. Therefore
Mrs. Overholt obtained a very good place before long, and when the
family in which she taught had its next attack of European fever and it
was decided that the girls must stay in Munich to improve their German
and their music, Mrs. Overholt was offered an increase of salary if she
would take them there and see to it, while their parents quartered
Germany, France, Spain, and Austria at the rate of forty miles an hour,
or even fifty and sixty where the roads were good. If the parents broke
their necks, Mrs. Overholt would take the children home; but this was
rather in the understanding than in the agreement.

Such was the position when John Hen