4. She took a small lump out of the coal-box, and Harry did the same.
Mother then fetched some pictures, and one or two other things, and the
talk began.

5. 'It is no wonder that you can't guess what coal is! It does not look
at all like what it was at first. It was not always in the ground; it
used to live on the top and get the air and sunshine.'

6. 'It must have been alive,' said Harry. 'Was it an animal?'

'No.'

'Then it was a plant!' cried Dora.

7. 'Well, it is all that is left of many plants and trees, whole forests
of plants and trees, that grew long, long ago.'

'Before you were born, mother?'

8. 'Yes, long before that! It was hundreds and thousands of years ago.
It was so far back that the trees were not like the trees we have now.
Many of them were big ferns. Think of a fern grown up to be a tree! And
many were great horse-tails. You know what a horse-tail is?'

9. 'Oh yes,' said Dora, 'we find them in the ditch down the lane. It is
such fun pulling them to pieces and putting them together again--like
puzzles!'

[Illustration: Horse-tail.]

10. 'Those trees must have been very strange,' said Harry. 'They would
not be nice to climb. But there were no boys in those days, so it did
not matter.'

[Illustration]

FIRE.

min'-er-al
coal
fen'-der
prop'-er
walk'-ing
laugh'-ing
grate
cru'-el
Lon'-don
smoke
al-read'-y
flame
blaze
beast
cage
pic'-tures

1. 'Don't you think,' said Harry, 'that a bit of coal would be a good
thing for our mineral box?'

2. 'I do,' said his father. 'Get a little lump, and put it in. And, by
the way, we want more coal on the fire. I must get some.'

3. 'How nice a fire is on a cold day!' said Dora, sitting down on the
fender, to be as near to it as she could.

'Very nice,' said her mother, 'in its proper place--in the grate.'

4. 'Ah, we should not like it to come walking about the room!' said
Harry, laughing. 'There would soon be no room'----

'And no house!' said Dora, shaking her head. 'And then what should we
do?'

5. Father came back with the coal, and put some into the grate, saying:

'Fire is a good servant but a bad master. If it gets its own way it is a
cruel thing. It would burn a town down. It once burned big London.'

6. Harry was looking at one of the lumps that had been put on the fire.
Smoke was coming out of it already. A flame burst out in front, and soon
the