Willie Willders in Difficulties.  
Mr Thomas Tippet, beaming and perspiring as of old, was standing at his bench, chisel in hand, and Willie Willders was standing with his back to the fire, and his legs pretty wide apart; not because he preferred that dégagé attitude, but because Chips and Puss were asleep side by side between his feet.
 
It must not be supposed that although Willie had changed so much since the first day he stood there, an equal change had taken place in Mr Tippet. By no means. He was a little stouter, perhaps, but in all other respects he was the same man. Not a hair greyer, nor a wrinkle more.
 
The workshop, too, was in exactly the same state, only a little more crowded in consequence of numerous models having been completed and shelved during the last seven years. There was, however something new in the shape of a desk with some half-finished plans upon it; for Willie had gradually introduced a little genuine engineering into the business.
 
At first, naturally enough, the boy had followed his employer’s lead, and, as we have said before, being very ingenious, as well as enthusiastic, had entered with all his heart and head into the absurd schemes of his patron; but as he became older he grew wiser. He applied himself to reading and study at home in the evenings with indomitable perseverance.
 
The result of his application was twofold. In the first place he discovered that he was very ignorant and that there existed a huge illimitable field of knowledge worth entering on seriously. His early training having been conducted (thanks to his mother) “in the fear of the Lord,” he regarded things that are spiritual, and have God and man’s duty to Him for their object, as part—the chief part—of that great field of knowledge; not as a separate field which may or may not be entered on according to taste. In the second place, he began to discover that his kind-hearted employer was a monomaniac. In other words, that, although sane enough in all other matters, he was absolutely mad in regard to mechanical discoveries and inventions, and that most of the latter were absolutely nonsensical.
 
This second discovery induced him to prosecute his studies with all the more energy, in order that he might be prepared for the battle of life, in case his existing connection with Mr Tippet should be dissolved.
 
His studies naturally took an engineering turn, and, being what is termed a thorough-going fellow, he did not rest until he had dived into mathematics so deep that we do not pretend to follow him, even in the way of description. Architecture, surveying, shipbuilding, and cognate subjects, claimed and obtained his earnest attention; and year after year, on winter nights, did he sit at the side of the fire in the little house at Notting Hill, adding to his stores of knowledge on these subjects; while his meek old mother sat darning socks or patching male attire on the other side of the fire with full as much perseverance and assiduity. One consequence of this was that Willie Willders, having begun as a Jack-of-all trades, pushed on until he became a philosopher-of-all-trades, and of many sciences too, so that it would have been difficult to find his match between Charing Cross and Primrose Hill.
 
And Willie was not changeable. True to his first love, he clung with all the ardour of youth to fire, fire-engines, and the fire-brigade. He would have become a member of the latter if he could, but that was in the circumstances impossible. He studied the subject, however, and knew its history and its working details from first to last. He did his best to invent new engines and improve on old ones; but in such matters he usually found that his inventions had been invented, and his improvements made and improved upon, long before. Such checks, however, did not abate his ardour one jot. He persevered in his varied courses until he worked himself into a species of business which could exist only in London, which it would be difficult to describe, and which its practitioner styled “poly-artism” with as much boldness as if the word were in Johnson’s Dictionary!
 
Standing on the hearth, as we have said, Willie related............