The summer and the autumn that followed, Gratian studied with his friend's tutor. And the winter after, greatly to his mother's joy, he went away as had been planned before. But not for ever of course. No great length of time passed without his returning to his birthplace.
"I should die," he said sometimes, "if I could not from time to time stand at the old porch and feel the breath of the four winds about me."
This is only the story of the very opening of the life of a boy who lived to make his mark among men. How he did so, how he found his voice, it is not for me to tell. But he had early learnt to choose the right, and so we know he prospered.
Besides—was he not the godchild of the Four Winds of Heaven?
THE END.
Mr. A. C. Swinburne, in The Nineteenth Century, writes:—
"It seems to me not at all easier to draw a lifelike child than to draw a lifelike man or woman: Shakespeare and Webster were the only two men of their age who could do it with perfect delicacy and success: at least, if there was another who could, I must crave pardon of his happy memory for my forgetfulness or ignorance of his name. Our own age is more fortunate, on this single score at least, having a larger and far nobler proportion of female writers; among whom, since the death of George Eliot, there is none left whose touch is so exquisite and masterly, whose love is so thoroughly according to knowledge, whose bright and sweet invention is so fruitful, so truthful, or so delightful as Mrs. Molesworth's. Any chapter of The Cuckoo Clock or the enchanting Adventures of Herr Baby is worth a shoal of the very best novels dealing with the characters and fortunes of mere adults."