“Mother,” said Master William Willders one night to his parent, as he sat at supper—which meal consisted of bread and milk; “he’s the jolliest old feller, that Mr Tippet, I ever came across.”

 

“I’m glad you like him, Willie,” said Mrs Willders, who was busy patching the knees of a pair of small unmentionables; “but I wish, dear, that you would not use slang in your speech, and remember that fellow is not spelt with an e-r at the end of it.”

 

“Come now, mother, don’t you go an’ get sarcastic¹. It don’t suit you; besides, there’s no occasion for it,—for I do my best to keep it down, but I’m so choke full of it that a word or two will spurt² up now and then in spite o’ me.”

 

Mrs Willders smiled and continued her patching; Willie grinned and continued his supper.

 

“Mother,” said Willie, after an interval³ of silence.

 

“Well, my son?”

 

“What d’ye think the old feller—ah! I mean fellow—is up to just now?”

 

“I don’t know, Willie.”

 

“He’s inventin’ a calc’latin’ machine, as is to do anythin’ from simple addition to fractions, an’ he says if it works well he’ll carry it on to algebra⁴ an’ mathematics, up to the fizmal calc’lus, or somethin’ o’ that sort. Oh, you’ve no notion how he strains himself at it. He sits down in his shirt-sleeves at a writin’-table he’s got in a corner, an’ tears away at the little hair he has on the sides of his head (I do believe he tore it all off the top with them inventions), then he bangs up an’ seizes his tools, and shouts, ‘Look here, Willie, hold on!’ an’ goes sawin’ and chisellin’ and hammerin’ away like a steam-engine. He’s all but bu’st himself over that calc’latin’ machine, and I’m much afraid that he’ll clap Chips into the sausage-machine some day, just to see how it works. I hope he won’t, for Chips an’ I are great friends, though we’ve only

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