It was indeed a problem to solve and a struggle to face. When food had been got for the little mouths, what was left for clothes and schooling? Very little for the first, nothing for the second. No schooling certainly for little George, and so he spent his childhood between running errands for his mother and standing by his father's engine fire, where the boys and girls of the village loved to gather to listen to old Robert's wondrous tales, or to see the birds fed, for the old man loved birds of all kinds, and would save the crumbs from his own scant dinner to feed the robins. Here it was that baby George learned that early love of birds that lasted as long as life. As a boy he would catch and tame the blackbirds, and these would fly about the cottage all day, and at night come and roost at his bed-head. Years after, when he was an old man, he used to tell how, walking with his father one day, he parted some thick branches overhead and lifted the child in his arms that he might peep at a nest full of young blackbirds. It was a sight he never forgot. But, baby though he was, his days were not all spent in play. At home there were seven younger brothers and sisters to be nursed and watched and kept out of the way of the heavy waggons that were dragged by horses along the tram-road in front of the house, and much of this fell to George's share. As the years passed the Stephenson family, obliged like other colliers "to follow the work," moved to a place called Dewley Burn, and now as George had reached the age of eight he was ready to earn some money! To show how smart and quick the child was for his years there has come down to us a pretty story. He and his sister Nell had gone to Newcastle one day, and among their little commissions they were bent on buying Nell a new bonnet. They found the very thing she wanted in a shop, but the price was beyond their purse. It was 1_s._ 3_d._ over the mark, and the pair, sadly downcast, had to leave the shop. Standing crestfallen outside the boy suddenly exclaimed, "I have it! Wait here till I come back." Off he darted, and Nell waited while the minutes wore to hours, and still he did not come. Just as she began to think he must either have been killed or run over he dashed up breathless and thrust the coveted 1_s._ 3_d._ into her hand. "But where did you get it?" she asked, astonished. "By holding gentlemen's horses," was the reply. The child's first situation at this time was with a woman who kept a farm and needed a boy to herd her cows and keep them out of the way of passing waggons. For this the little herd-boy was paid 2_d._ a day. How happy he was in long leisure hours to bird's-nest or whittle whistles out of reeds, or in company with another boy--by-and-by, like himself, to be one of the world's great engineers--to model toy engines out of clay, using hollowed corks for corves and hemlock stalks for steam pipes!