Effie did not see the absolute necessity of either playing truant or sulking. She thought a well-disposed youth should be grateful for being under the eye of a master at a time of life when guardianship was peculiarly needful. “All very well two hundred years ago, Effie,—at the time of such apprenticeships as our great grandfather used to tell us of,—when the apprentices used to sit in the same room, and eat at the same table with their masters, and walk behind them to church. But times are changed now. I could tell you such things as you little dream of, if I chose to prove to you how much management our masters have over our pleasures and our morals. What is it to them what we do with ourselves when work is over? And as for the time that the wheels are turning, the masters must be clever men if they get half as much work out of their oldest and best apprentices as out of any one of their journeymen?” “How were apprentices so different in our great grandfather’s time?” “I dare say it might be more difficult to learn arts at that time; and so a longer apprenticeship might be wanted. Neither was there such a rush to get one’s bread as there is now; nor, consequently, so much provocation at being kept out of it, at a great expense to everybody, when one is capable of shifting for one’s self. You cannot wonder, Effie, at my flitting from time to time, when a chance offers of winning a penny, or when I can amuse myself, instead of toiling for nothing.” “But I do wonder, Adam. You forget what you owe your master for teaching you your trade; and you forget what you forfeit, if you have your indentures broke.” “Not I. I paid my master long ago for everything but the meat and drink that I would rather earn for myself. And you need not begin to talk of how foolish we should all be in marrying too early if our being bound till twenty-one did not prevent it. It may chance that worse things than early marriages happen when high-spirited apprentices are led or driven into a disposition for idleness. In my mind,—the best way to keep a young man steady and sober is to let him work, as soon as he is fit for it, with the hopefulness which comes from working for one’s self. You will see how steady I shall be as soon as I have something to work for.” “And if your master casts you off, mean time?” “Then I must go somewhere away from yon great town, where one can do little without a title of apprenticeship. When the Deep Cut is made,—as they say it certainly will be,—ropes will be wanted there in plenty, for ships that will put in. I’ll go and settle near the Deep Cut.—’Tis a fine place,—that sluice that is to be. Tommy Thorn and I got over to see it in one of our trips; and there was——” “Tell me nothing about it now,” said Effie: “but go home to your master, that I may tell my mother that you are there; and so carry her some little comfort in her misery.” “Misery! what misery?”