Grandmother Dear: A Book for Boys and Girls

t is, as yo

cold to g

cold not sl

th's Goo

other once had an adventure that we might like to hear? It was at the beginning of the story you told us-I think it w

other

dly worth calling an adventure, my boy. It showed her courage an

school who saved a child from being burnt to death not long ago. It was his little cousin where

at's his name?

lied Ralph. "He's an awf

at of a sometimes most inconveniently good memory. "Prosper de Lastre! I do bel

e seemed on the verge of a hasty

, "a fellow may be mistaken, mayn't he? I don'

me rejoinder when gran

bove it really? not the wisest man that ever lived. And Molly, my dear little girl, why can you

serenely. "It means-it means-oh I don

n that other's place you would not like said or done to you-that is one mean

pened h

er, because you see people don't feel the same. My head isn't twisty-turny enough to u

ea what you are going to go bump straight at," said

ack Ralph's good humour anyway, a

mother," he said slyly, "and once there

whistled when he was late, so that she might be sure it was he, when she went down to open the door at his knock-and more than once she looked at the clock and wished he would come. Suddenly a step outside the room, coming up the stair, made her start. She had hardly time to wonder confusedly if it could be my grandfather, knowing all the time it could not be he-the doors were all supposed to be locked and barred, and could only be opened from the inside-when the door was flung open and some one looked in. Not my grandfather certainly; the man who stood in the doorway was dressed in some sort of rough workman's clothes, and his face was black and grimy. That was all she had time to catch sight of, for, not expecting to see her there, the intruder, startled, turned sharply round and made for the stair. Up jumped my little grandmother; she took it all in in an instant, and saw that her only chance was to take advantage of his momentary surprise and start at seeing her. Up she jumped and rushed bravely after him, making all the clatter she could. Downstairs he flew, imagining very probably in his fright that two or three people instead of one little woman were at his heels, and downstairs, round and round the corkscrew staircase, she flew after him. Never afterwards, she has often since told me, did she quite lose the association of that wild flight, never could she go downstairs in that house without the feeling of the man before her, and seeming to hear the rattle-rattle of a leathern apron he was wearing, which clatt

r than usual, "but suppose the man had been waiting outside

gular burglar, and so it turned out. He was a man who worked at a smithy near by, and this was his first attempt at burglary. He had heard that my grandfather was to be out late,

ut in prison?

rted people often refrained from accusing the wrong-doers. This man had been in sore want of money for some reason or other; he wa

e," said Molly, wi

school. "Thank you for the story, grandmother. If it is fine this afterno

id grandmother. "But yo

aid Ralph, as

t with Marcelline this afternoon to do some shopping? The pret

'clock the little girls set off, one on each side of good-natu

me-not so very long ago did it seem to her now-when their mother had been just as bright and happy as they-the mother w

and sends n

old He ta

blessing and pleasure to have what she had so often longed

e much influence with a boy? But he is a dear boy in many ways, and I was pleased with the way he spoke yesterday. It wa

dark, and, once the sun had gone down, cold, with a peculiar biting coldness not fel

not to be seen, and she was beginning to fear the temptations of the shops had delayed them unduly, when they suddenly came in view; and the moment

ave got such nice things. They are in Marcelline's basket," nodding back t

don't know what we saw. We met Ralph in the town, and I'm sure

have got into. Had her thoughts of him this very afternoon been a sort of presentiment of evil? She grew white, so whit

is very morning or yesterday grandmother was explaining to you about tact. Don't be frightened,

Molly, irrepressible still, though on the verge

hey had been out to the little forests to fetch it. It was fagots. But I didn't mean to frighten you, gr

er, relieved, though mystified. "Wh

head sagely. "And if Molly will just leave it alone and say nothing about it, it will be

nything about it, and if Ralph asks me if we saw him I'll sc

him think we had seen him, and make a fuss. However, there's no fear of Ralph as

, "I shall never understand about tact, never. We've got our le

other was pleased to see them go upstairs to their little study wit

than his wont-for as a rule Ralph was a particularly tidy boy-his hair w

u been doing with yourself?" s

himself down

ut she judged it wiser not, at that m

ot at once

he said, after

, my

the boys in my class a cad-wha

?" said grand

ndle of wood-little wood they call it-along the street one day. Well, just fancy, grand

boy's frankness. "Sensible child Sylvia is," she s

id you do that for, an

ice where there is a lot of that nice dry brushwood that anybody may take. Prosper knew the place, and took

at he has to do it? I thought all the boys were of a better class," she added, with so

ves 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 s

E COP

and self-denying an example as Prosper's, and still more glad that you should have the right feeling and moral courage to

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

at did

h, I fancy. He always says old people are grumpy-doesn't 'grogneur' mean grumpy, grandmother?-that they can't help it, and when

e in an attic, with no children to love and cheer me, my poor old hands swollen and twisted with rheumatism, perha

ys," said Ralph, eagerly. "Perhaps if y

, we might think of something for a little Christmas present for her, might we not? You must talk to

s much notice of Prosper himself. Oh no, you could do it much better than any one else, gr

o her and kissed him. "M

said, half shyly, "I've had a lesson about not calling fellows cads in a hurry, but a

I haven't forgotten. As well as I could remember, I have written out the little story-I only wish

some sheets of ruled paper, which she held up for Ralph to see. On the o