“Oh, dear no! that I do not; but grandmother sometimes explains what is hard, and tells me a great many pleasing things about the manners of the country where our Saviour and his Apostles lived.  I never am happier than when I read to her, and she talks to me about what I have read.”

“Well,” said Tom, “mother hears me read a chapter now and then, but she always seems to think it a trouble; and so I read as fast as I can, to get it the sooner over.  Father commonly says, he’s too tired to listen.”

Ned said no more on the subject then; but when they had both done work, he asked Tom if he would like to walk home with him, and look at his garden.

Tom hesitated at first; there seemed to be something in the idea that made him uncomfortable.  But he had been gradually growing fond of Ned, and Ned’s account of the pleasures and comfort of his home had made him wish to go there; so he told his companion that he would go with him.

Ned’s grandmother received the two boys very kindly, and gave them some tea and bread and butter.  Having learned from Tom that his parents would not be uneasy at his absence, she asked him to stay with them all the evening.

The next day Tom looked wistfully at Ned, as if he wished to go home with him, but did not like to say anything about it.  Ned observed this, and told him that his grandmother had said he might come whenever he liked.

“Then I’ll go to-night,” said Tom.

And accordingly he went home with Ned that evening, and almost every evening afterwards for some time.  He helped Ned to work in his garden, and took a part in all his other employments.  Ned always read the Bible after tea, which Tom at first thought very tiresome; and he would not have stayed, had he not wished for Ned’s company afterwards to walk part of the way back with him to the village; but soon he became so much interested in what he heard read, as well as by the improving and interesting conversation of Ned’s grandmother, that he looked forward to the evening’s reading as one of the pleasantest events of the day.

One afternoon, as the two boys were digging a bed in the garden, Tom said to his companion—­

“I have long been going to tell you of something that makes me very uncomfortable; but I have never yet had courage to do it.  I know you think that I stole your apricots, don’t you?”

Ned did not immediately reply.  His good-nature made him unwilling to own that he did suspect Tom; and he could not tell an untruth, by saying that he did not suspect him.

“Well,” continued Tom, “I am sure you must; and I do not wonder at it.  Now the truth is, that when you told me about your apricots, I thought to myself that I would come when it was dusk, and take two or three of them just to eat, thinking that you would not miss such a small number.  But I did not like to go by myself; so I asked Fred Morris if he would go with me.  He said, ’O