“Well, mother, you always know how to talk me over, When I came in to-night I did think that I would never go the shop again.  But I will promise you to be patient and industrious still.  Considering all that you have, done for me, this is little enough for me to do for you.  When I have a shop of my own, you shall live like a lady.  I’ll trust to your word that I shall be sure to get on, if I am patient and industrious, though I don’t see how it’s to be.—­It’s not so very bad to bear after all; and, bad as my master is, there’s one comfort, he lets me have my Saturday nights and blessed Sundays with you.  Well, I feel happier now, and I think I can eat my supper.  We forgot that my porridge was getting cold all this time.”

Stephen kept his word; day after day, and month after month, his patience and industry never flagged.  And plenty of trials, poor fellow, he had for his fortitude.  His master, a small stationer in a small country town, to whom Stephen was bound apprentice for five years, with a salary barely sufficient to keep him in clothes, was a little, spare, sharp-faced man, who seemed to have worn himself away with continual fretfulness and vexation.  He was perpetually fretting, perpetually finding fault with something or other, perpetually thinking that everything was going wrong.  Though he did cease to go into a passion with, and to strike Stephen, the poor lad was an object always at hand, on which to vent his ill-humour, Many, many times was Stephen on the point of losing heart and temper; but he was always able to control himself by thinking of his mother.  And, as he said, there was always comfort in those Saturday nights and blessed Sundays.  A long walk in the country on those blessed Sundays, and the Testament readings to his mother, would always strengthen his often wavering faith in her prophecies of good in the end, would cheer his spirits, and nerve him with a fresh resolution for the coming week.  And what was it that the widow hoped would result from this painful bondage?  She did not know; she only had faith in her doctrine—­that patience and industry would some time be rewarded. How the reward was to come in her son’s case, she could not see.  It seemed likely, indeed, from all appearances, that the doctrine in this case would prove false.  But still she had faith.

It was now nearly four years since the conversation between mother and son before detailed.  They were together again on the Saturday evening.  Stephen had grown into a tall, manly youth, with a gentle, kind, and thoughtful expression of countenance.  Mary looked much older, thinner, paler, and more anxious.  Both were at this moment looking very downcast.

“I do not see that anything can be hoped from him,” said Stephen, with a sigh.  “I have now served him faithfully for five years; I have borne patiently all his ill-humour; I have never been absent a moment from my post; and during all that time, notwithstanding all this, he has never thanked me, he has never so much as given me a single kind word, nor even a kind look.  He must know that apprenticeships will be out on Tuesday, yet he never says a word to me about it, and I suppose I must just go without a word.”