say as to his son's present companions.

"Oh, so they are--at least they are not what you would call poor," said
Ralph. "Prosper belongs to quite rich people. But he's an orphan; he
lives with his uncle, and I suppose he's not rich--Prosper himself,
I mean--for he says his uncle's always telling him to work hard at
school, as he will have to fight his way in the world. He has got a
little room up at the top of the house, and that's what put it into
his head about the wood. There's an old woman, who was once a sort of a
lady, who lives in the next room to his. You get up by a different stair;
it's really a different house, but once, somehow, the top rooms were
joined, and there's still a door between Prosper's room and this old
woman's, and one morning early he heard her crying--she was really
_crying_, grandmother, she's so old and shaky, he says--because she
couldn't get her fire to light. He didn't know what she was crying for at
first, but he peeped through the keyhole and saw her fumbling away with
damp paper and stuff that wouldn't light the big logs. So he thought and
thought what he could do--he hasn't any money hardly--and at last he
thought he'd go and see what he could find. And he found a _beautiful_
place for brushwood, and he carried back all he could, and since then
every Thursday he goes out to that place. But, of course, one fellow
alone can't carry much, and you should have seen how pleased he was when
I said I'd go with him. But I thought I'd better tell you. You don't
mind, grandmother?"

[Illustration: IN THE COPPICE.]

Grandmother's eyes looked very bright as she replied. "_Mind_, my Ralph?
No, indeed. I am only glad you should have so manly and self-denying an
example as Prosper's, and still more glad that you should have the right
feeling and moral courage to follow it. Poor old woman! is she quite
alone in the world? She must be very grateful to her little next-door
neighbour."

"I don't know that she is--at least not so very," said Ralph. "The fun of
it was, that for ever so long she didn't know where the little wood came
from. Prosper found a key that opened the door, and when she was out he
carried in the fagots, and laid the fire all ready for her with some of
them; and when she came in he peeped through the keyhole. She was so
surprised, she couldn't make it out. And the wood he had fetched lasted a
week, and then he got some more. But the next time she found him out."

"And what did sh