"Me!" he exclaimed, "I'd have no chance—even failing Tony."
"I don't know," said Dolly. "You're never a naughty boy, and you can read very nice when you like. Master always seems to think you read next best to Tony. I shouldn't wonder if he sent you, if he's vexed with Tony. And he will be that, for he told him to do out that writing so very neatly. I think it was to be shown to the gentlemen that come to see the school sometimes. But I musn't go any farther with you, Gratian. It'll be dark before I get home. I'm afraid Tony must have dropped the book out here, and that it blew away. Good-night, Gratian."
"Good-night, Dolly," he replied. And then after a little hesitation he added, "I wish—I wish Tony hadn't lost his book."
"Thank you, Gratian," said the little girl as she ran off.
Gratian stood and looked after her with a queer mixture of feelings. It was true, as he had said to Dolly, he did wish Tony had not lost his book, but almost more he wished he had not found it. But just now, standing there in the softly fading light, with the evening breeze—no longer the sharp blast of the morning—gently fanning his cheeks, looking after little Dolly as she ran home, and thinking of Tony's sunburnt troubled face, the angry feelings seemed to grow fainter, till the wish to see his schoolfellow punished for his mischievous trick died away altogether. And once he had got to this, it was a quick step to still better things.
"I will, I will," he shouted out aloud, though there was no one—was there no one?—to hear. And as he sprang forward to rush after Dolly and overtake her, it seemed to him that he was half-lifted from his feet, and at the same moment another waft of the breeze he had been feeling, though still softer and with a scent as of spring flowers about it, blew into his face.
"Are you kissing me, kind wind?" he said laughing, and in answer, as it were, he felt himself blown along almost as swiftly as the night before. At this rate it did not take him long to gain ground on the miller's daughter.
"Dolly, Dolly," he called out when he saw himself within a few paces of her. "Stop, do stop. I have something for you—something to say to you."
Dolly turned round in astonishment.