"Don't fret about it, John. Hope, maybe, 'll make all our fortunes yet. Mr. Kolb told me that she had a wonderful ear for music, and would be a fine performer some day."
"Fortunes! 't isn't money only, Martha; I hate to give up a thing like this. I felt so sure of myself when I started; and—and—it is failure, you see; and failure is harder to bear than the hardest kind of labor. I've always thought, you know, that I was cut out for this sort of thing,—this inventive business,—but it looks as though I had been more conceited than anything else, doesn't it?"
"No, no; it doesn't, John. Your worst enemy couldn't say that you were conceited. But you've had so little chance, so little time; that's what's the trouble. But you haven't come to the end yet, and I didn't mean that I wanted you to give up trying. I only meant that I wouldn't bother over that. You must start something new; that's all I meant, John," cried Mrs. Benham, full of affectionate sympathy and repentance.
"Oh! I understand, Martha; I understand. What you said didn't discourage me. I dare say I shall tinker away at something again by and by; but this thing"—striking the model a little blow with his hand—"is a failure."
At that moment the door-bell rang, and Mrs. Benham hurried away to answer its summons. Left alone, her husband stretched out his hand towards the model, and opened the door of its fire-box. There was still a tiny bed of coals there.
"We'll have a last run," he said, with a half-smile; and opening the steam-valve, he saw the beautiful little model start once more on its way along the rails he had laid for it upon the work-bench that ran around the room. As he had constructed a self-acting pressure that should close the steam-valve at a certain point, the model was under as perfect control from where he stood as if it were of larger proportions, and he were managing and directing it from its engine cab. A look of pride, followed by an expression of sadness, flickered over the builder's face, as he watched it. Where had he failed?
Round and round the course the pretty thing sped, not at any headlong speed, but at the pace that had been set for it, to prove or disprove the effectiveness of the combination. Click, click, how smoothly it ran! everything apparently perfect, from the wheels to the wire-netted flues. If only—But what—what is that? and John Benham starts forward with sudden eager attention. His quick ear has caught a slight sound that he had not heard before, so slight that only his ear would have detected it. The machine was on its finishing round; three seconds more, and the self-acting steam-valve has shut, the engine slows up to a stop, and its builder, with a quickened pulse, bends eagerly forward.
CHAPTER VI.
Perhaps it is five minutes later that the wife opens the door again. "John, who do you think has just called?" She receives no answer. "Dear me!" she says vexedly to herself, "he's worrying at that machine again. I wish he'd give it up. John!" Still no answer. Mrs. Benham walks into the room. "John, I wish—" But as she catches sight of her husband's face, which is pale, and changed by some strong feeling, she forgets what she was about to say, and exclaims in a troubled tone, "What is it? What is the matter, John?"