enough to speak, "I have a great deal of good news to tell you. Farmer
Tomkyns says he will employ me all through the winter, and pay me the
same wages that he does now. This is one piece of good news. And the
other is, that Mr. Stockwell, the greengrocer, will buy all my apricots,
and give me a good price for them. I am to take them to him next
market-day. I had to wait more than half-an-hour before I could speak to
him, and that made me so late. O how beautiful they are!" continued he,
gazing with admiration at the tree. "O grandmother, how happy I am!"

His grandmother smiled, and said she was glad to hear this good news.
"And now come in and have your tea, child," she added; "for I am sure
you must be hungry."

"O grandmother," said Ned, as they sat at tea, "now that Mr. Stockwell
will buy the fruit, you will be able to have a cloak to keep you warm
this winter. It often used to grieve me, last year, to see you obliged
to go to church such bitter cold weather, with only that thin old shawl
on. I know you said you could not spare money to get a cloak for
yourself, because you had spent all you could save in buying me a
jacket. My tree has never borne fruit till this year; and you always
said that when it did, I should do what I pleased with the money its
fruit would fetch. Now, there is nothing I should like to spend it on
better than in getting a cloak for you."

"Thank you, Ned," replied his grandmother; "it would indeed be a very
great comfort. I do not think I should have suffered so much from
rheumatism last winter, if I had had warmer clothing. If it was not for
your apricot-tree, I must have gone without a cloak this winter also;
for, what with our pig dying, and your having no work to do in the
spring, this has been but a bad year for us."