"I've been near it this time, though," said Gratian, feeling, now that the temptation was over, the comfort of confessing the worst. "I was very mad with Tony, and I didn't like bringing myself to give back his book. I don't want you to think me better than I am, Dolly." "But I do think you very good all the same, I do," said the little girl earnestly, "and I'll tell Tony so. And you shan't have any more tricks played you by him--he's not so bad as that. Thank you very much, Gratian. If he gets the prize, it'll be all through you." "And about going to the Big House," added Gratian, rather sadly. "He'll be the one for that now. I think that's far before getting a prize. It was thinking of that made me feel I _must_ give him his book. I'd give a good deal, I know, to be the one to go the Big House." "Would you?" said Dolly, a little surprised, for it was not very often Gratian spoke so eagerly about anything. "I don't know that I'd care so much about it. And to be sure you might have been the one if you hadn't helped Tony now! But I don't know that it would be much fun after all--just amusing a little boy that's ill." "You didn't see the lady, Dolly, but _I_ did," said Gratian. "She's not like any one I ever saw before--she's so beautiful. Her hair's a little the colour of yours, I think, but her skin's like--like cream, and her eyes are as kind as forget-me-nots." "Was she finely dressed?" asked Dolly, becoming interested. "Yes--at least I think so. Her dress was very soft, and a nice sort of shiny way when she moved, and she spoke so prettily. And oh, Dolly, it'd be terribly nice to see the Big House. Fancy, I've heard tell there are beautiful pictures there." "Pictures--big ones in gold frames, do you mean?" Dolly inquired. "I don't know about gold frames. I've never seen any. But pictures of all sorts of things--of places far away, I daresay, where the sky is so blue and the big sea--like what the master tells us sometimes in our geography. Oh, I'd like more than anything to see pictures, Dolly." "I never thought about such things. What a funny boy you are, Gratian," said Dolly, as she ran off joyfully, with Tony's tattered book in her hand. It did not take Gratian long to make his way home--the feeling of having done right "adds feather to the heel." But as he sped along the moorland path he could not help wondering to himself if his soft-voiced friend of the night before were anywhere near.