"Sadly so—sad—ly so—o," hummed back the second voice. "He only dreams—dreams are very well in their way, they are a beginning sometimes, so—me—ti—imes. But he will never do anything even with his dreams unless he works too—wo—orks too."
"Ah no—no—o. All must work save the will-o'-the-wisps, and what good are they? What good are the—ey?"
Then the two, or the three, maybe even the four, Gratian could not be sure but that there were perhaps four, voices seemed all to hum together, "What good are the—ey?" Till with a sudden rushing call one broke in with a new cry.
"Sisters," it said, "we must be off. Our work awai—aits us, awai—aits us."
And softly they all faded away, or was it perhaps that Gratian fell asleep?
He woke the next morning with a confused remembrance of what he had heard, and for some little time he could not distinguish how much he had dreamt from what had reached his ears before he fell asleep. For all through the night a vague feeling had haunted him of the soft, humming murmur, and two or three times when he half woke and turned on his side, he seemed to hear again the last echoes of the voices in the chimney.
"But it couldn't have been them," he said to himself as he sat up in his little bed, his hands clasped round his knees, as he was very fond of sitting; "they said they were going away to their work. What work could they have—voices, just voices in the chimney? And they said I was wasting my time. What did they mean? I'm not like a will-o'-the-wisp; I don't dance about and lead people into bogs. I——"
But just then his mother's voice sounded up the stairs.
"Gratian—aren't you up yet? Father is out, and the breakfast will be ready in ten minutes. Quick, quick, my boy."
Gratian started; he put one pink foot out of bed and looked at it as if he had never seen five toes before, then he put out the other, and at last found himself altogether on the floor. It was rather a chilly morning, and he was only allowed cold water in a queer old tub that he could remember being dreadfully afraid of when he was a very little boy—it had seemed so big to him then. But he was not so babyish now; he plunged bravely into the old tub, and the shock of the cold completely awakened him, so that he looked quite bright and rosy when he came into the kitchen a few minutes later.