One of the boys in the back seat said, in a half whisper, "It is nothing but a chestnut burr."
"Lucy," said the master to a bright-eyed little girl near him, "what is this?"
"It is a chestnut burr, sir," said she.
"Do you know what it is for?"
"I suppose there are chestnuts in it."
"But what is this rough, prickly covering for?"
Lucy did not know.
"Does any body here know?" said the master.
One of the boys said that he supposed it was to hold the chestnuts together, and keep them up on the tree.
"But I heard a boy say," replied the master, "that they ought not to be made to grow so. The nut itself, he thought, ought to hang alone on the branches, without any prickly covering, just as apples do."