Frank did not go to sleep again, he couldn’t. As he lay there, it seemed to him as though every nerve in his body was wide awake and on a terrific tension.
Frank had heard of some of the great inventions of the world discovered in a dream. Had he, too, in a dream, or a half-waking doze, had the same experience.
“It came like a flash,” he reflected. “It’s plain as day now. The apple corer improved, remodeled, in perfect working order and a success. Oh, I simply can’t lie here.”
Frank wriggled and tossed restlessly. Then, when he was certain that Markham was asleep again, he slipped quietly out of bed, put on part of his clothes and glided noiselessly downstairs.
Frank softly closed the store door communicating with the hallway. He lit a lamp and went over to a counter containing the great heap of apple corers.
He selected one, got a sheet of tin and a pair of stovepipe shears, and became engrossed in cutting out and forming cones, funnels and all kinds of odd-shaped contrivances.
For fully two hours Frank was working at his task. He seemed to be supplying the crude apple corer with an inner sheath, to which he had supplied a small three-bladed device. He turned it about, altered it, worked over it, and a broad smile of satisfaction stole across his face as he progressed.
“Frank, this is not sleeping.”
Frank looked up from his task, quite startled, to find his mother standing a few feet away, watching him.