"My dear, you'd have no time to be afraid or not afraid—you'd be dead before you'd even looked about you. Ah—it's a terrible inconvenience, those bodies of yours—if you were like us, now! But I mustn't waste my time talking, only as I was passing I thought I'd say a word or two. When my sisters are all together there's never any getting in a syllable edgeways. Good-bye, my child. We'll meet again oftener during the next few months."
"Good-bye, Godmother White-wings," said Gratian, and a gust of wind rushing past him with a whistle seemed to answer, "Good-bye."
"I'm very glad to have had a little talk with her," he said to himself; "she's much nicer than I thought she was, and she makes one feel so strong and brisk. Dear me—what wonderful places there must be up in the north where she lives!"
The master called him aside after morning lessons.
"Did your mother send any message to me, Gratian?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," and he repeated what Mrs. Conyfer had said.
The schoolmaster looked pleased.
"I'm glad she and your father have no objection," he said. "I think it may be a good thing for you in several ways. But I must explain it to you. You know the Big House as they call it, here? A lady and her son have come to stay there for a time—relations of the squire's——"
"Yes, sir, I know," interrupted Gratian; "she plays the organ on Sunday afternoons, and her little boy is ill."
"Not exactly ill, but he had a fall, and he mustn't walk about or stand much. It's dull for him, as at home he was used to companions. His mother asked me to send him one of my best boys—a boy who could read well for one thing—as a playmate. At first I thought of Tony Ferris, and I spoke of him. But Tony has begged me to choose you instead of him."