In a few minutes tea was upon the table, and Will sat down with the skipper, his wife, and two daughters--girls of ten and twelve. The lad enjoyed his meal immensely, and did full justice to the fish.
"You will have plenty of them, before you eat your next tea on shore. We pretty nigh live on them, when we are on the fishing grounds."
"The same kind of fish as this?"
"No, mackerel are caught in small boats, with a different sort of gear, altogether. We get them, sometimes, in the trawl--not shoals of 'em, but single fish, which we call horse mackerel."
After tea, the skipper lit his pipe; and his wife, after clearing up, took some knitting, and sat down and began to question the new apprentice.
"It's lucky, for you, you found such a good friend," she said, when he had finished his story. "That's how it is you are so different from other boys who have been apprenticed from the House. I should never have thought you had come from there.
"And she gave you good advice as to how you should go on, I'll be bound."
"Yes, ma'am," Will said, "and I hope I shall act up to it."
"I hope so, Bill; but you'll find it hard work to keep yourself as you should do, among them boys. They are an awful lot, them smack boys."
"Not worse nor other boys," her husband said.