But the child is pursued and overtaken by sleep, caught,
surprised, and overcome. He goes no more to sleep, than he takes a
"constitutional" with his hoop and hoopstick. The child amuses himself
up to the last of his waking moments. Happily, in the search for
amusement, he is apt to learn some habit or to cherish some toy, either
of which may betray him and deliver him up to sleep, the enemy. What
wonder, then, if a child who knows that everyone in the world desires his
peace and pleasure, should clamour for companionship in the first
reluctant minutes of bed? This child, being happy, did not weep for what
he wanted; he shouted for it in the rousing tones of his strength. After
many evenings of this he was told that this was precisely the vociferous
kind of wakefulness that might cause the man with two heads to show
himself.
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.
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