Four Winds Farm. Molesworth Mrs.
Mrs. Conyfer kept it beautifully clean to begin with, and there was a fireplace, and a good cupboard in the wall, and a splendid view of moor and sky from the window. Gratian was very proud of his room; he had only had it a short time, only since the day he was nine years old, and it made him feel he was really growing a big boy. But to-night he was hardly in his usual good spirits. It weighed on his mind that the teacher at the Sunday School had been displeased with him; for he knew him to be kind and patient, and Gratian liked to win his smile of approval.
"It is always the same with me," thought the little boy, "at school every day too I am the stupidest. I wish there were no lessons in the world. I wish there were only birds, and lambs, and hills, and moors, and the wind – most of all the wind, and no books – no books, and – "
But here he fell asleep!
When he woke the room was quite dark; the clouds had hung their dusters over the moon's face by mistake perhaps, or else she had got tired of shining and had turned in for a nap, thought Gratian sleepily. He shut his eyes again, and curled himself round the other way, and would have been asleep again in half a minute, but for a sound which suddenly reached his ears. Some one was talking near him! Gratian opened his eyes again, forgetting that that could not help him to hear, and listened. Yes, it was a voice – two voices; he heard one stop and the other reply, and now and then they seemed to be talking together, and gradually as he listened he discovered that they came from the direction of the fireplace. Could it be the voices of his father and mother coming up from below, through the chimney, somehow? No, their voices were not so strangely soft and sadly sweet; besides their room was not under his, nor did they ever talk in the middle of the night.
"They are too sleepy for that," thought Gratian with a little smile. For the farmer and his wife were very hard-working, and even on Sunday they were tired. It was a long walk to church, and unless the weather were very bad they always went twice.
Gratian listened again, more intently than ever. The voices went on; he could distinguish the different tones – more than two he began to fancy. But how provoking it was; he could not catch the words. And from the strain of listening he almost began to fall asleep again, when at last – yes, there was no doubt of it now – he caught the sound of his own name.
"Gratian, Gra – tian," in a very soft inquiring tone; "ye – es, he is a good boy on the whole, but he is foolish too. He is wasting his time."
"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.
His mother looked up from the pot of oatmeal porridge she was ladling out into little bowls for the breakfast.
"That's right," she said; "you look better than you did last night. Try and have a good day at school to-day, Gratian. Monday's always the best day for a fresh start."
Gratian listened, but did not answer. It generally took him a good while to get his speeches ready, except perhaps when he was alone with Jonas and Watch. It seemed easier to him to speak to Jonas than to anybody else. He began eating his porridge – slowly, porridge and milk spoonfuls turn about, staring before him as he did so.
"Mother," he said at last, "is it naughty to dream?"
"Naughty to dream," repeated his mother, "what do you mean? To dream when you're asleep?"
"No – I don't think it's that kind," began the child, but his mother interrupted him. Her own words of the night before returned to her mind. Could Gratian have overheard them?
"You mean dreaming when you should be working, perhaps?" she said. "Well, yes – without saying it's naughty, it's certainly not good. It's wasting one's time. Everybody's got work to do in this world, and it needs all one's attention. You'll find it out for yourself, but it's a good thing to find it out young. Most things are harder to learn old than young, Gratian."
Gratian listened, but again without speaking.
"It's very queer," he was thinking to himself – "mother says the same thing."
CHAPTER II
AT SCHOOL
"But there all apart,
On his little seat
A little figure is set awry."
Gratian shouldered his satchel and set off to school. He had some new thoughts in his head this morning, but still he was not too busy with them to forget to look about him. It was evident that old Jonas had been right; the storm spirits had been about in the night. The fallen autumn leaves which had been lying in heaps the day before were scattered everywhere, the little pools of water left by yesterday's rain had almost disappeared, overhead the clouds were gradually settling down in quiet masses as if tired and sleepy with the rushing about of the night before.
It was always fresh up at Four Winds Farm, but to-day there was a particularly brisk and inspiriting feeling in the air; and as Gratian ran down the bit of steep hill between the gate and the road which he partially followed to school, he laughed to himself as a little wind came kissing him on the cheek.
"Good morning, wind," he said aloud. "Which of them are you, I wonder?" And some old verses he had often heard his mother say came into his head —
"North winds send hail,
South winds bring rain,
East winds we bewail,
West winds, blow amain."
"I think you must be west wind, but you're not blowing amain this morning. Never mind; you can when you like, I know. You can work with a will. There now – how funny – I'm saying it myself; I wonder if that's what the voices meant I should do – work with a will, work with a will," and Gratian sang the words over softly to himself as he ran along.
As I said, his road to school was great part of the way nothing but a sheep-track. It was not that there did