only half developed yet, a boldly-set mouth, and his mother's kindly,
practical blue eyes. For surely the eyes of practical people are always
quite different from those of all others; and not many people are
practical, though I never knew anybody who did not think he or she was,
except pinchbeck artists, writers, and players, who are sure that since
they must be geniuses, it is necessary to be Bohemians in order to show
it. The really big ones are always trying to be practical, like Sir
Isaac Newton when he ordered a good-sized hole to be cut in his barn
door for the cat, and a little one next it for the kitten.

But Newton Overholt did not at all resemble his great namesake. He was a
practical young soul, and had not yet developed the American disease
which consists in thinking of two things at the same time. John Henry
had it badly, for he had been thinking of the tangent-balance, his wife,
his boy, and the coming Christmas, all together, since he had got home,
and the three problems had got mixed and had made his head ache.

Nevertheless he looked up from his work-table and smiled when his son
came in.

"Everything all right?" he asked, with an attempt to be cheerful.

"Oh yes, fine," answered the boy, looking at the motionless model for
the five-hundredth time, and sticking his hands into his pockets. "I'm
only third in mathematics yet, but I'm head in everything else. I wish I
had your brains, father! I'd be at the head of the arithmetic class in
half a shake of a lamb's tail if I had your brains."

So far as mathematics were concerned this sounded probable to John
Henry, who would have considered the speed of the tail to be a variable