She rang the bell, and when Andrew came, she told him to wheel Fergus's couch into the picture-gallery, which opened into the library where they were. Andrew opened a double door at the other end of the room from that by which they had come in, and then he gently wheeled forward the couch on which Fergus was lying, and pushed it through the doorway. The gallery was scarcely large enough to deserve the name, but to Gratian's eyes it looked a very wonderful place. It was long and rather narrow, and the light came from the top, and along the sides and ends were hung a good many pictures. All down one side were portraits--gentlemen with wigs, and ladies with powder, and some in queer, fancy dresses, mostly looking stiff and unnatural, though among them were some beautiful faces, and two or three portraits of children, which caught Gratian's eye. "What do you think of them?" asked Fergus. Gratian hesitated. "I don't think people long ago could have been as pretty as they are now," he said at last, "except that lady in the long black dress--oh, she is very pretty, and so is the red little boy with the dog, and the two girls blowing soap-bubbles. The big one has got eyes like--like the lady's," he added half-timidly. The lady looked pleased. "You have a quick eye, Gratian," she said. "The pictures you admire are the best here, and that little girl is my great-grandmother. Now, look at the other side. These are pictures of all kinds--not family ones." Gratian followed her in silence. The pictures were mostly landscapes--some so very old and dark that one could scarcely distinguish what they were. And some of which the colours were brighter, the boy did not care for any better--they were not like any skies or trees he had ever seen or even imagined, and he felt disappointed. Suddenly he gave a little cry. "Oh, I like that--I do like that," he said, and he glanced up at the lady for approval. She smiled again. "Yes," she said, "it is a wonderful picture. Quite as much a picture of the wind as of the sea." Gratian gazed at it with delight. The scene was on the coast, on what one might call a playfully stormy day. The waves came dancing in, their crests flashing in the sunshine, pursued and tossed by the wind; and up above, the little clouds were scudding along quite as busy and eager about _their_ business, whatever it was, as the white-sailed fishing-boats below. "Do you like it so very much?" she asked. "Yes," the boy replied, "that's like what I fancied pictures were. I've never seen the sea, but I can feel it must be like that." And after this he did not seem to care to see any others. [Illustration: And when she sat down to play the light sparkled and glowed on her fair hair, making it look like gold.]