Read the story. Then answer the questions.

The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean

There lived in a certain village a poor old woman who had collected a mess of beans, and was going to cook them. So she made a fire on her hearth, and, in order to make it burn better, she put in a handful of straw. When the beans began to bubble in the pot, one of them fell out and lay, never noticed, near a straw which was already there; soon a red-hot coal jumped out of the fire and joined the pair. The straw began first, and said, "Dear friends, how do you come here?" The coal answered, "I jumped out of the fire by great good luck. I should have been burned to ashes." The bean said, "I too have come out of it with a whole skin. I should have been cooked like my comrades." "Luckily I managed to slip through her fingers." Straw said. "What had we better do now?" said the coal. "I think," answered the bean, "that as we have been lucky as to escape with our lives, we will go together into foreign lands." The proposal pleased the two others, and they started on their travels. Soon they came to a little brook, and as there was no bridge. The straw was struck with a good idea, and said, "I will lay myself across, so that you can go over me as if l were a bridge!" So the straw stretched him from one bank to the other, and the coal, quickly trotted up to go over the newly-made bridge. When, however, she reached the middle, and heard the water rushing past beneath her, she was stopped, and could get no farther. So the straw began to get burnt, broke in two pieces, and fell in the brook, and the coal slipped down, hissing as she touched the water. The bean, who had prudently remained behind on the bank, went on laughing so excessively that she burst and now would she certainly have been undone forever, if a tailor on his travels had not by good luck stopped to rest himself by the brook. He took out needle and thread and stitched her together again. The bean thanked him, but as he had sewn her up with black stitches, all beans since then have a black seam.

Where were the straw, the coal and the bean?