d been alone in the world he would have taken his small cash
balance and his model to the foundry, quite careless as to whether he
ever got a meal again until the Motor worked. But there was the boy to
be thought of, and desperate as the unhappy inventor was, he would not
starve his son as well as himself. He was quite sure of his little
balance, though he had never had any head for figures of that sort. It
was an easy affair in his eyes to handle the differential calculus,
which will do anything, metaphorically speaking, from smashing a rock as
flat and thin as a postage stamp, to regulating an astronomical clock;
but to understand the complication of a pass-book and a bank account was
a matter of the greatest possible difficulty. Newton would have done it
much better, though he could not get to the head of his class in
arithmetic. That is the difference between being an inventor and having
a practical mind. As for Mrs. Overholt, she was perfectly wonderful at
keeping accounts; but then she had been taught a great many things, from
music and drawing to compound interest and double entry, and she had
been taught them all just so far as to be able to do them nicely without
understanding at all what she did; which is sound modern education, and
no mistake. The object of music is to make a cheerful noise, which can
be done very well without pencil and paper and the rules of harmony.

But Overholt could neither make a cheerful noise, nor draw a holly leaf,
nor speak French, nor even understand a pass-book, though he had
invented an Air-Motor which would not work, but was a clear evidence of
genius. The only business idea he had was to make his little balance
last as long as possible, in spite of the terrible temptation to take it
and offer it to the founder as a cash advance, if only he might have his
piece of casting done. Where the rest of the money would come from he
did not know; probably out of the Motor. It looked so easy; but there
was the boy, and it might happen that there would be no dinner for
several days.

On the first of December he cashed a cheque in the town, as usual; and
he paid Barbara's wages and the coal merchant, and the month's bill for
kerosene, and the butcher and the grocer, and the baker, and that was
practically all; and he went to bed that night feeling that whatever
happened there was a whole month before another first came round, and he
owed no one anything more for the present, and Newton wou