"Come in," I said, and a fellow-lodger put in his head. "Are you good at works, Mr Smith?" he said. "What works?" I said; "fireworks--gasworks?" "No, no; I mean works of things as goes with wheels and springs." "Middling," I said, for I was fond of pulling clocks to pieces, and trying to invent. "I wish you'd come and look at this sewing machine of mine, for I can't get it to go." Sewing machines were newish in those days, and I got up to have a look at it, and after about an hour's fiddling about, I began to see a bit the reason why--the purpose, you know, of all the screws and cranks and wheels; I found out too why our neighbour's wife--who was a dressmaker, and had just started one--could not get it to go; and before night, by thinking, and putting this and that together, had got her in the way of working it pretty steadily, though with my clumsy fingers I couldn't have done it myself. I had my bit of dinner and tea with those people, and they forced half-a-crown upon me as well, and I went back feeling like a new man, so refreshing had been that bit of work. "There," said my wife, "I told you something would come." "Well, so you did," I said; "but the something is rather small." But the very next day--as we were living in the midst of people who were fast taking to sewing machines--if the folks from the next house didn't want me to look at theirs; and then the news spreading, as news will spread, that there was somebody who could cobble and tinker machinery, without putting people to the expense that makers would, if the jobs didn't come in fast, so that I was obliged to get files and drills and a vice--regular set of tools by degrees; and at last I was as busy as a bee from morning to night, and whistling over my work as happy as a king. Of course every now and then I got a breakage, but I could generally get over that by buying a new wheel, or spindle, or what not. Next we got to supplying shuttles, and needles, and machine cotton. Soon after I bought a machine of a man who was tired of it. Next week I sold it at a good profit; bought another, and another, and sold them; then got to taking them and money in exchange for new ones; and one way and the other became a regular big dealer, as you see. Hundred? Why, new, second-hand, and with those being repaired upstairs by the men, I've got at least three hundred on the premises, while if anybody had told me fifteen years ago that I should be doing this, I should have laughed at him. That pretty girl showing and explaining the machine to a customer? That's Ruth, that is. No, not my daughter--yet, but she soon will be. Poor girl, I always think of her and of bread thrown upon the waters at the same time. Curious idea that, you will say, but I'll tell you why.