right, anyway, if you only
don't worry. That's what I believe, father."

"It's a hopeful view, at all events. The only objection to it is that
it's a good deal like dreaming, and I've no right to dream any more.
When you see that I'm going to, you must make me sit up and mind my
lesson!"

He even laughed a little, and it was not badly done, considering that he
did it on purpose to show how he meant to make the best of it all,
though Hope would not do anything for him. He ate something too, if only
to keep the hungry boy company.

They went into the workshop, and found the bright moonlight streaming
through the window that looked east. It fell full on the motionless
Motor, under its plate-glass case, and turned all the steel and brass to
silver and gold, and from the clean snow that covered the desolateness
of the yard outside the moon sent a white reflection upwards that
mingled with the direct moonlight in a ghostly sort of way. Newton stood
still and looked at the machine, while Overholt felt about for matches.

"If only it would begin to move now, just of itself!"

The man knew that it would not, and wished that the boy would not even
suggest such a thing, and he sighed as he lit the lamp. But all the same
he meant to spend half the night in taking a last farewell of the
engine, and of all the parts on which he had spent months and years,
only to let them be broken up for old metal in the end.

The two sat down on each side of the little City and went to work to
build the railway station; and after all, when Overholt looked at the
Common and the College and remembered how happy he had been there, he
began to feel that since dreams were nothing but dreams, except that
they were a great waste of time and money, and of energy and endurance,
he might possibly find some happiness again in the old life, if he could
only get back to it.

So Hope came back, rather bedraggled and worn out after her long
excursion, and took a very humble lodging in the little City which had
once been all hers and the capital of her kingdom. But she was there,
all the same, peeping out of a small window to see whether she would be
welcome if she went out and took a little walk in the streets.

For the blindest of all blind people are those who have quite made up
their minds not to see; and the most miserable of all the hopeless ones
are those that wilfully turn their backs on Hope when she stands at the
next corner holding out her hand