“Then you’ll have to take another message from me, Willie. Tell Miss Tippet when you go to-morrow that I will give myself the pleasure of looking in on her in the course of the evening,” said Fred. “Mr Auberly is not to be there, is he?”
“No, not as I knows of.”
“Well, good-night, Willie.”
Willie took his departure, marching to the usual national air, and soon after Fred Auberly bade his friend good-night and left him.
Chapter Twenty One.
A Small Tea-Party.
Miss Tippet’s tea-party began by the arrival of Willie Willders, who, being fond of society, and regardless of fashion, understood his hostess literally when she named her tea-hour! For full half an hour, therefore, he had the field to himself, and improved the occasion by entertaining Miss Tippet and Emma Ward with an account of the wonderful inventions that emanated from the fertile brain of Mr Thomas Tippet.
Strange to say, a deep and lasting friendship had sprung up between the eccentric old gentleman and his volatile assistant. Willie sympathised so fully with his master in his wild schemes, and displayed withal such an aptitude for mechanical contrivance, and such a ready appreciation of complex theories, that Mr Tippet soon came to forget his extreme youth, and to converse with him, propound schemes and new ideas to him, and even to ask his advice; with as much seriousness as though he had been a full-grown man.