The History of Gutta-Percha Willie | Page 3

thing, his father and
mother used to talk very freely before him-much more so than most
parents do in the presence of their children; and nothing serves better
for teaching than the conversation of good and thoughtful people.
While they talked, Willie would sit listening intently, trying to
understand what he heard; and although it not unfrequently took very
strange shapes in his little mind, because at times he understood neither
the words nor the things the words represented, yet there was much that
he did understand and make a good use of. For instance, he soon came
to know that his father and mother had very little money to spare, and
that his father had to work hard to get what money they had. He learned
also that everything that came into the house, or was done for them,
cost money; therefore, for one thing, he must not illuse his clothes. He
learned, too, that there was a great deal of suffering in the world, and
that his father's business was to try to make it less, and help people who
were ill to grow well again, and be able to do their work; and this made
him see what a useful man his father was, and wish to be also of some
good in the world. Then he looked about him and saw that there were a
great many ways of getting money, that is, a great many things for
doing which people would give money; and he saw that some of those
ways were better than others, and he thought his father's way the very
best of all. I give these as specimens of the lessons he learned by
listening to his father and mother as they talked together. But he had
another teacher.
Down the street of the village, which was very straggling, with nearly
as many little gardens as houses in it, there was a house occupied by
several poor people, in one end of which, consisting just of a room and
a closet, an old woman lived who got her money by spinning flax into
yarn for making linen. She was a kindhearted old creature-a widow,
without any relation near to help her or look after her. She had had one
child, who died before he was as old as Willie. That was forty years
before, but she had never forgotten her little Willie, for that was his
name too, and she fancied our Willie was like him. Nothing, therefore,

pleased her better than to get him into her little room, and talk to him.
She would take a little bit of sugar-candy or liquorice out of her
cupboard for him, and tell him some strange old fairy tale or legend,
while she sat spinning, until at last she had made him so fond of her
that he would often go and stay for hours with her. Nor did it make
much difference when his mother begged Mrs Wilson to give him
something sweet only now and then, for she was afraid of his going to
see the old woman merely for what she gave him, which would have
been greedy. But the fact was, he liked her stories better than her
sugarcandy and liquorice; while above all things he delighted in
watching the wonderful wheel go round and round so fast that he could
not find out whether her foot was making it spin, or it was making her
foot dance up and down in that curious way. After she had explained it
to him as well as she could, and he thought he understood it, it seemed
to him only the more wonderful and mysterious; and ever as it went
whirring round, it sung a song of its own, which was also the song of
the story, whatever it was, that the old woman was telling him, as he sat
listening in her high soft chair, covered with long-faded chintz, and
cushioned like a nest. For Mrs Wilson had had a better house to live in
once, and this chair, as well as the chest of drawers of dark mahogany,
with brass handles, that stood opposite the window, was part of the
furniture she saved when she had to sell the rest; and well it was, she
used to say, for her old rheumatic bones that she had saved the chair at
least. In that chair, then, the little boy would sit coiled up as nearly into
a ball as might be, like a young bird or a rabbit in its nest, staring at the
wheel, and listening with two ears and one heart to its song and the old
woman's tale both at once.
One sultry summer afternoon, his mother not being very well and
having gone to lie down, his father