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.