y afternoon in winter; and the invitation was accepted with
alacrity. But it was never extended again. The boy was a perfect terror
at that form of diversion. Yet so distressed was Overholt at the
prospect of a sad Christmas for his son that he even thought of
voluntarily giving up his thin body to the torment again on the 25th of
December, if that would amuse Newton and make it seem less dull for him.
Good-will towards men, and even towards children, could go no further
than that, even at Christmas time. At least Overholt could think of no
greater sacrifice that might serve.

For what are toys to a boy of thirteen? He wants a gun and something to
kill, or he wants a boat in which he can really sail, or a live pony
with a real head, a real tail, and four real legs, one at each corner.
That had been Newton's definition of the desired animal when he was six
years old, and some one had given him a wooden one on rockers with the
legs painted on each side. Girls of thirteen can still play with dolls,
and John Henry had read that, far away in ancient times, girls
dedicated their dolls, with all the dolls' clothes, to Artemis on the
eve of their wedding-day. But no self-respecting boy of thirteen cares a
straw for anything that is not real, except an imaginary pain that will
keep him away from school without cutting down his rations; and in the
invention and presentation of such fictitious suffering he beats all the
doll-makers in Germany and all the playwrights and actors in the world.
You must have noticed that the pain is always as far from the stomach as
is compatible with probability. Toothache is a grand thing, for nobody
can blame a healthy boy for eating then, if he can only bear the pain.
And he can, and does, bear it nobly, though with awful faces. The little
beast knows that all toothaches do not make your cheek swell. Then there
is earache; that is a splendid invention; it goes through your head like
a red-hot corkscrew with a powerful brakeman at the other end, turning
it steadily--between meals. Only certain kinds of things really serve to
make him stop. Ice-cream is one, and it takes a great deal of it. It is
well known that ice will cool a red-hot corkscrew.

But this is a digression, for no boy ever has any pain at Christmas; it
is only afterwards that it comes on; usually about ten days.

After an hour Overholt came to the conclusion that he had better take
Pandora's box out to the cottage and sit on it ther