for King Christmas to open the door softly and make them all great
people in his kingdom. But if it is the right sort of house, he is
already looking in through the window, to be sure that every one is all
ready for him, and that nothing has been forgotten.

Now, although Overholt's cottage was a miserable place for a professor
who had lived very comfortably and well in a College town, and although
the thirteen-year-old boy could remember several pretty trees, lighted
up with coloured candles and gleaming with tinsel and gilt apples, they
both felt that this was going to be the greatest Christmas in their
lives, because the motionless Motor was going to move, and that would
mean everything--most of all to both of them, the end of the mother's
exile, and her speedy home-coming. Therefore neither said anything for a
long time while the chemical stuff was slowly warming itself and
getting ready, inside a big iron pot, of which the cover was screwed on
with a high-temperature thermometer sealed in it, and which stood on the
top of the stove where Overholt could watch the scale.

He would really have preferred to be alone for the first trial, but it
was utterly impossible to think of sending the boy to bed. He was sure
of success, it is true, yet he would far rather have been left to
himself till that success was no longer in the future, but present; then
at last, even if Newton had been asleep, he would have waked him and
brought him downstairs again to see his triumph. The lad's presence made
him nervous, and suggested a failure which was all but impossible. More
than once he was on the point of trying to explain this to Newton, but
when he glanced at the young face he could not find it in his heart to
speak. If he only asked the boy, as a kindness, to go into the next room
for five minutes while the machine was being started, he knew what would
happen. Newton would go quietly, without a word, and wait till he was