Unable to explain that no child ever goes to sleep, but that sleep, on
the contrary, "goes" for a child, the little boy yet accepted the
penalty, believed in the man, and kept quiet for a time.

There was indignation in the mother's heart when the child instructed her
as to what might be looked for at his bedside; she used all her emphasis
in assuring him that no man with two heads would ever trouble those
innocent eyes, for there was no such portent anywhere on earth. There is
no such heart-oppressing task as the making of these assurances to a
child, for whom who knows what portents are actually in wait! She found
him, however, cowering with laughter, not with dread, lest the man with
two heads should see or overhear. The man with two heads had become his
play, and so was perhaps bringing about his sleep by gentler means than
the nurse had intended. The man was employing the vacant minutes of the
little creature's flight from sleep, called "going to sleep" in the
inexact language of the old.

Nor would the boy give up his faith with its tremor and private laughter.
Because a child has a place for everything, this boy had placed the
monstrous man in the ceiling, in a corner of the room that might be kept
out of sight by the bed curtain. If that corner were left uncovered, the
fear would grow stronger than the fun; "the man would see me," said the
little boy. But let the curtain be in position, and the child lay alone,
hugging the dear belief that the monster was near.

He was earnest in controversy with his mother as to the existence of his
man. The man was there, for he had been told so, and he was there to
wait for "naughty boys," said the child, with cheerful self-condemnation.
The little boy's voice was somewhat hushed, because of the four ears of
the listener, but it did not falter, except when his mother's arguments