"Ah, but I am, though," he said brightly; and the big kitchen looked so cheery, and the little supper so tempting, that Gratian smiled with satisfaction.
"How good of you to make it so nice for me, mother!" he said. "I could never like anywhere better than my own home, however beautiful it was."
[CHAPTER X.]
THE STORY OF THE SEA-GULL
"Now my brothers call from the bay,
Now the great winds shoreward blow,
Now the salt tides seaward flow,
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray,
Children dear, let us away!
This way, this way!"
The Forsaken Merman
The winter—the real winter, such as it is known up in that country—came on slowly that year. There was no snow and but little frost before Christmas. Fergus gained ground steadily, and his mother, who at first had dreaded the experiment of the bleak but bracing air, was so encouraged that she stayed on from week to week. And through these weeks there was never a half-holiday which the two boys did not spend together.
Gratian was learning much—more than even those who knew him best had full understanding of; much, much more than he himself knew.
"He is like a different child," said the schoolmaster one day to the lady, when she had looked in as she was passing through the village; "if you had seen him a year ago; he seemed always dreaming or in the clouds. I really thought I should never succeed in teaching him anything. You have opened his mind."