It had come to be the middle of September.  There had been a three days rain, which had so freshened the parched grass and checked the fading of the leaves, that one might readily have thought the summer had returned to bring new foliage and flowers, and to deck the earth for still another season with its covering of green.

But it had cleared off cold.

“It’d be nice to have a fire to-night, Uncle Billy,” said Ralph, as the two were walking home together in the twilight, from their day’s work at the breaker.

“Wull, lad,” was the reply, “ye ha’ the wood choppit for it, ye can mak’ un oop.”

So, after supper, Ralph built a wood fire in the little rude grate, and Billy lighted his clay pipe, and they both drew their chairs up before the comfortable blaze, and watched it while they talked.

It was the first fire of the season, and they enjoyed it.  It seemed to bring not only warmth but cheer.

“Ain’t this nice, Uncle Billy?” said Ralph, after quite a long silence.  “Seems kind o’ home-like an’ happy, don’t it?”

“Ye’re richt, lad!  Gin a mon has a guid fire to sit to, an’ a guid pipe o’ ‘bacca to pull awa’ on, what more wull ye? eh, Ralph!”

“A comfortable room like this to stay in, Uncle Billy,” replied the boy, looking around on the four bare walls, the uncarpeted floor, and the rude furniture of the room, all bright and glowing now in the light of the cheerful fire.

“Oh! the room’s guid enook, guid enook,” responded the man, without removing the pipe from his mouth.

“An’ a nice bed, like ours, to sleep in.”

“True for ye lad; tired bones rest well in a saft bed.”

“An’ plenty to eat, too, Uncle Billy; that’s a good thing to have.”

“Richt again, Ralph! richt again!” exclaimed Billy, enthusiastically, pushing the burning tobacco down in the bowl of his pipe.  “An’ the Widow Maloney, she do gi’ us ‘mazin’ proper food, now, don’t she?  D’ye min’ that opple pie we had for sooper, lad?”

“Yes, that was good,” said Ralph, gazing absently into the fire.  “They’s only one thing more we need, Uncle Billy, an’ that’s somebody to love us.  Not but what you an’ me cares a good deal for each other,” added Ralph, apprehensively, as the man puffed vigorously away at his pipe, “but that ain’t it.  I mean somebody, some woman, you know, ’at’d kiss us an’ comfort us an’ be nice to us that way.”

Billy turned and gazed contemplatively at Ralph.  “Been readin’ some more o’ them love-stories?” he asked, smiling behind a cloud of smoke.

“No, I ain’t, an’ I don’t mean that kind.  I mean your mother or your sister or your wife—­it’d be jes’ like as though you had a wife, you know, Uncle Billy.”

Again, the man puffed savagely at his pipe before replying.

“Wull,” he said at last, “na doot it’d be comfortin’ to have a guid weef to care for ye; but they’re an awfu’ trooble, Ralph, women is,—­an awfu’ trooble.”