The sorrowful widow was so fond of her little Henry, and the uncertainty of life was so burnt into her now, that she could hardly bear him out of her sight.  Yet her love was of the true maternal stamp; not childish and self-indulgent.  She kept him from school, for fear he should be brought home dead to her; but she gave her own mind with zeal to educate him.  Nor was she unqualified.  If she had less learning than school-masters, she knew better how to communicate what she did know to a budding mind.  She taught him to read fluently, and to write beautifully; and she coaxed him, as only a woman can, over the dry elements of music and arithmetic.  She also taught him dancing and deportment, and to sew on a button.  He was a quick boy at nearly everything, but, when he was fourteen, his true genius went ahead of his mere talents; he showed a heaven-born gift for—­carving in wood.  This pleased Joseph Little hugely, and he fostered it judiciously.

The boy worked, and thought, and in time arrived at such delicacies of execution, he became discontented with the humdrum tools then current.  “Then learn to make your own, boy,” cried Joseph Little, joyfully; and so initiated him into the whole mystery of hardening, forging, grinding, handle-making, and cutlery:  and Henry, young and enthusiastic, took his turn at them all in right down earnest.

At twenty, he had sold many a piece of delicate carving, and could make graving-tools incomparably superior to any he could buy; and, for his age, was an accomplished mechanic.

Joseph Little went the way of all flesh.

They mourned and missed him; and, at Henry’s earnest request, his mother disposed of the plant, and went with him to London.

Then the battle of life began.  He was a long time out of employment, and they both lived on his mother’s little fortune.

But Henry was never idle.  He set up a little forge hard by, and worked at it by day, and at night he would often sit carving, while his mother read to him, and said he, “Mother, I’ll never rest till I can carve the bloom upon a plum.”

Not to dwell on the process, the final result was this.  He rose at last to eminence as a carver:  but as an inventor and forger of carving tools he had no rival in England.

Having with great labor, patience, and skill, completed a masterpiece of carving (there were plums with the bloom on, and other incredibles), and also a set of carving-tools equally exquisite in their way, he got a popular tradesman to exhibit both the work and the tools in his window, on a huge silver salver.

The thing made a good deal of noise in the trade, and drew many spectators to the shop window.

One day Mr. Cheetham, a master-cutler, stood in admiration before the tools, and saw his way to coin the workman.

This Cheetham was an able man, and said to himself, “I’ll nail him for Hillsborough, directly.  London mustn’t have a hand that can beat us at anything in our line.”