ents. Now that he was silent, he became no more than an
eight-year-old lad who could not possibly be doing anything constructive
with this mad array of equipment. The messiness of the place merely made
the madness of the whole program seem worse.

But she turned back to her booklet. Maybe James was right. If she could
assemble this doodad without knowing the first principle of its
operation, without even knowing from the name what the thing did, then
she might be willing to admit that--messy as it looked--the machine could
be reconstructed.

Trapped by her own interest, Mrs. Bagley pitched in.

They took a week off to rearrange the place. They built wooden shelves to
hold the parts in better order. These were by no means the work of a
carpenter, for Mrs. Bagley's aim with a saw was haphazard, and her
batting average with a hammer was about .470; but James lacked the
strength, so the construction job was hers. Crude as it was, the place
looked less like a junkshop when they were done. Work resumed on the
assembly of the educator.

Of course the writing suffered.

The budget ran low. James was forced to abandon the project for his
typewriter. He drove himself hard, fretting and worrying himself into a
stew time after time. And then as August approached, Nature stepped in to
add more disorder.

James entered a "period of growth." In three weeks he gained two inches.

His muscles, his bones and his nervous system ceased to coordinate. He
became clumsy. His handwriting underwent a change, so severe that James
had to practically forge his own signature of Charles Maxwell. To avoid
trouble he stopped the practice of writing individual checks for the
bills and transferred a block sum of money to an operating account in
Mrs. Bagley's name.

His fine regimen went to pieces.

He embarked on a haphazard program of sleeping, eating and working at odd
hours, and his appetite became positively voracious. He wanted what he
wanted when he wanted it, even if it were the middle of the night. He
pouted and groused when he didn't get it. In calmer moments he hated
himself for these tantrums, but no amount of self-rationalization stopped
them.

During this period, James was by no means an efficient youngster. His
writing suffered the ills of both his period of growth and his upset
state of mind. His fingers failed to coordinate on his typewriter and his
manuscript copy turned out rough, with strikeovers, xxx-outs, and gross
mist