“When there’s lots, it is,” answered Newton with conviction.  “Of course, there are all sorts of things I’d like to have, but it’s no good wishing you could lay Columbus’s egg and hatch the American eagle, is it?[Footnote:  The writer acknowledges his indebtedness for this fact in natural and national history to his aunt, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, to whom it was recently revealed in the course of making an excellent speech.] What would you like, father, if you could choose?”

“Three things,” answered Overholt promptly.  “I should like to see that wheel going round, softly and steadily, all Christmas Day.  I should like to see that door open and your mother coming in.”

“You bet I would too!” cried Newton, dropping from bold metaphor to vulgar vernacular.  “Well, what’s the third thing?  You said there were three.”

“I should like you to have a real, old-fashioned, glorious Christmas, my boy, such as you had when you were smaller, before we left the house where you were born.”

“Oh well, you mustn’t worry about me, father; if there’s plenty of turkey and ice-cream and the cream-cakes, I can stand it.  Mother can’t come, anyhow, so that’s settled, and it’s no use to think about it.  But the motor—­that’s different.  There’s hope, anyway.  The wheel may go round.  If you didn’t hope so, you wouldn’t go on fussing over it, would you?  You’d go and do something else.  They always say hope’s better than nothing.”

“It’s about all we shall have left for Christmas, so we may as well build as much on it as we can.”

“I love building,” said Newton.  “I like to stand and watch a bricklayer just putting one brick on another and making the wall grow.”

“Perhaps you’ll turn out an architect.”

“I’d like to.  I never showed you my city, did I?” He knew very well that he had not, and his father looked at him inquiringly.  “No.  Oh well, you won’t care to see it.”

“Yes, I should!  But I don’t understand.  What sort of a city do you mean?”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” answered the boy, affecting carelessness.  “It’s only a little paper city on a board.  I don’t believe you’d care to see it, father.  Let’s talk about Christmas.”

“No.  I want to see what you have made.  Where is it?  I’ll go with you.”

Newton laughed.

“I’ll bring it, if you really want me to.  It’s easy enough to carry.  The whole thing’s only paper!”

He left the workshop and returned before Overholt had finished cutting the thread of the screw he was making.  The man turned as the boy pushed the door open with his foot, and came in carrying what had evidently once been the top of a deal table.

On the board he had built an ingenious model of a town, or part of one, but it was not finished.  It was entirely made of bits of cardboard, chips of wood, the sides of match-boxes, and odds and ends of all sorts, which he picked up wherever he saw them and brought home in his pocket for his purpose.  He had an immense supply of such stuff stored away, much more than he could ever use.