"I don't know about gold frames. I've never seen any. But pictures of all sorts of things—of places far away, I daresay, where the sky is so blue and the big sea—like what the master tells us sometimes in our geography. Oh, I'd like more than anything to see pictures, Dolly."
"I never thought about such things. What a funny boy you are, Gratian," said Dolly, as she ran off joyfully, with Tony's tattered book in her hand.
It did not take Gratian long to make his way home—the feeling of having done right "adds feather to the heel." But as he sped along the moorland path he could not help wondering to himself if his soft-voiced friend of the night before were anywhere near.
"I think she must be pleased with me," he thought. "It feels like her kissing me," as just then the evening breeze again met him as he ran. "Is it you Golden-wings, or you, Spirit of the Waves?" he said, for he had learnt in his dream to think of them thus. And a little soft laughter in the air about him told him he was not far wrong. "Perhaps it is both together," he thought. "I think they are pleased. It is nicer than when that sharp East-wind comes snapping at one—though after all, East-wind, I think perhaps I should thank you for having stung me as you did this morning—I rather think I deserved it."
Whiz, rush, dash—came a sharp blast as he spoke. Gratian started, and for half a moment felt almost angry.
"I didn't deserve it just now, though," he said. But a ripple of laughter above him made his vexation fade away.
"You silly boy," came a whisper close to his ear. "Can't you take a joke?"
"Yes, that I can, as well as any one;" and no sooner were the words out of his mouth than again, with the whir and the swoop now becoming familiar to him, he was once more raised from the ground, and really, before he knew where he was, he found himself at the gate of the farm-house.
His mother was just coming out to the door.
"Dear me, child," she said, "how suddenly you have come! I have been out several times to the gate to look for you, but though it is not yet dark I didn't see you."