"No, a great many haven't, and some who have don't use it well, which is worse than having none. But don't look so grave; we shall have plenty of time for talking about all these things. I think you must be going home now, otherwise your mother will be wondering what has become of you. And thank her for letting us have you, and say I hope you may come again on Saturday. You don't mind the long walk home—for it is almost dark, you see?"
"Oh no, I don't mind the dark or anything like that," said Gratian with a little smile, which the lady, even though her forget-me-not eyes were so very clear, could not quite understand.
For he was thinking to himself, "How could I be afraid, with my four godmothers to take care of me, wherever I were?"
Then he turned to say good-bye to Fergus, and the little fellow stretched up his two thin arms and clasped them round the moorland child's neck.
"I love you," he said; "kiss me and come again soon, and let us make stories to tell each other."
The lady kissed him too.
"Thank you for being so good to Fergus," she said.
And Gratian, looking up in her face, wished he could tell her how much he had liked all he had seen and heard, but somehow the words would not come. All he could say was, "Thank you, and good-night."
Out-of-doors again, especially when he got as far as the well-known road he passed along every day, it seemed all like a dream. All the way down the avenue of pines he kept glancing back to see the lights in the windows of the Big House—he liked to think of Fergus and his mother in there by the fire, talking of the afternoon and making, perhaps, plans for another.
"I hope his back won't hurt him to-night when they carry him up to bed," he said to himself. "It was very good of Golden-wings to come. But I'm afraid she can't be here much more, now that the winter is so near. Green-wings might perhaps come sometimes, but——"