Jack reckoned that Eliza was content to live off what they had, like a Gentleman's daughter, and that was fine with Jack, who enjoyed spending more than getting. He in the meantime went back to his usual habit, which was to spend many days roaming about any new place he came into, to learn how it worked. Unable to read, unfit to converse with, he learned by watching – and here there was plenty of excellent watching. At first he made the mistake of leaving his crutch behind in Eliza's garret, and going out as an able-bodied man. This was how he learned that despite all of those Hollandgänger coming in from the East, Amsterdam was still ravenous for labor. He hadn't been out on the street for an hour before he'd been arrested for idleness and put to work dredging canals – and seeing all the muck that came off the bottom, he began to think that the Doctor's story of how small creatures got buried in river-bottoms made more sense than he'd thought at first.