"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?"
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 she say?"
"At first she was rather offended, till he explained how he had got it; and then she thanked him, of course, but not so very much, I fancy. He always says old people are grumpy—doesn't 'grogneur' mean grumpy, grandmother?—that they can't help it, and when his old woman is grumpy he only laughs a little. But you're not grumpy, grandmother, and you're old; at least getting rather old."