He looked rather less tidy than his wont--for as a rule Ralph was a particularly tidy boy--his hair was tumbled, and his hands certainly could not have been described as _clean_.
"Well, Ralph, and what have you been doing with yourself ?" said grandmother, as he came in.
Ralph threw himself down on the rug.
"My poor rug," thought grandmother, but she judged it wiser not, at that moment, to express her misgivings aloud.
Ralph did not at once reply.

Then-- "Grandmother," he said, after a little pause.
"Well, my boy ?" "You remember my calling one of the boys in my class a cad--what Molly began about last night ?" "Well, my boy ?" said grandmother again.
"Do you remember what made me call him a cad?
It was that I met him carrying a great bundle of wood--little wood they call it--along the street one day.

Well, just fancy, grandmother, _I've_ been doing it too.
That's what I wanted to stay later for this afternoon." Grandmother's heart gave a bound of pleasure at her boy's frankness.
"Sensible child Sylvia is," she said to herself.

But aloud she replied with a smile, "Carrying wood! what did you do that for, and where did you get it ?" "I'll tell you, I'll tell you all about it," said Ralph.

"We went out after school to a sort of little coppice where there is a lot of that nice dry brushwood that anybody may take.