He dreamt that he awoke, and found himself not in his comfortable bed in his own room, but in an equally comfortable but much more uncommon bed in a very different place. Out on the moor! He opened his eyes and stared about him in surprise; there were the stars, up overhead, all blinking and winking at him as if asking what business a little boy had out there among them all in the middle of the night. And when he did find out where he was, he felt still more surprised at being so warm and cozy. For he felt perfectly so, even though he had neither blankets nor sheets nor pillow, but instead of all these a complete nest of the softest moss all about him. He was lying on it, and it covered him over as perfectly as a bird is covered by its feathers.
"Dear me," he said to himself, "this is very funny. How have I got here, and who has covered me up like this?"
But still he did not feel so excessively surprised as if he had been awake; for in dreams, as everybody knows, any surprise one feels quickly disappears, and one is generally very ready to take things as they come. So he lay still, just quietly gazing about him. And gradually a murmur of approaching sound caught his ears. It was like soft voices and fluttering garments and breezes among trees, all mixed together, till as it came nearer the voices detached themselves from the other sounds, and he heard what they were saying.
"Yes, he deserves a treat, poor child," said one in very gentle caressing tones; "you have teased him enough, sisters."
"Teased him!" exclaimed another voice, and this time it seemed a familiar one to him; "I tease him! Why, as you well know, it is my mission in life to comfort and console. I don't believe in petting and praising to the same extent as you do, perhaps—still you cannot say I ever tease. Laugh at him a little now and then, I may. But that does no harm."
"I never pet and praise except when it is deserved," murmured the first voice—and as he heard its soft tones a sort of delicious languor seemed to creep over Gratian—"never. But I beg your pardon, sister, if I misjudged you. You can be rigorous sometimes, you know, and——"
"So much the better—so much the better," broke in with clear cutting distinctness another voice; "how would the world go round—that is to say, how would the ships sail and the windmills turn—if we were all four as sweet and silky as you, my golden-winged sister? But it was I who teased the child as you call it—I slapped him on the face; yes, and I am ready to do it again—to sting him sharply, when I think he needs it."
"Right, right—quite right," said another voice, not exactly sharp and clear like the last, yet with a resemblance to it, though deeper and sterner and with a strange cold strength in its accents. "You are his true friend in doing so. I for my part shall always be ready to invigorate and support him—to brace him for the battles he must fight. But you, sister, have a rare gift of correction and of discerning the weak points which may lead to defeat and failure. Yours is an ungrateful task truly, but you are a valuable monitor."
"I must find my satisfaction in such considerations; it is plain I shall never get any elsewhere," replied the former speaker, rather bitterly. "What horrid things are said of me, to be sure! Every ache and pain is laid at my door—I am 'neither good for man nor beast,' I am told! and yet—I am not all grim and gray, am I, sisters? There is a rosy glow in the trail of my garments if people were not so short-sighted and colour-blind."
"True, indeed, as who knows better than I," said the sweet mellow tones of the first speaker. "When you come my way and we dance together, sister, who could be less grim than you?"