Ralph Peden looked up at her, apparently entirely satisfied. What was a note-book to him now? He saw the sunbonnet resting upon the wavy distraction of the pale gold hair. He had a luxurious eye for colour. That lilac and gold went well together, was his thought.
Trammelled by the fallen head-gear, Winsome threw her head back, shaking out her tresses in a way that Ralph Peden never forgot. Then she caught at the strings of the errant bonnet.
"Oh, let it alone!" he suddenly exclaimed.
"Sir?" said Winsome Charteris--interrogatively, not imperatively. Ralph Peden, who had taken a step forward in the instancy of his appeal, came to himself again in a moment.
"I beg your pardon," he said very humbly, "I had no right--"
He paused, uncertain what to say.
Winsome Charteris looked up quickly, saw the simplicity of the young man, in one full eye-blink read his heart, then dropped her eyes again and said: "But I thought you liked lilac sunbonnets!"
Ralph Peden had now his turn to blush. Hardly in the secret of his own heart had he said this thing. Only to Mr. Welsh had his forgetful tongue uttered the word that was in his mind, and which had covered since yesterday morn all the precepts of that most superfluous wise woman, the mother of King Lemuel.
"Are you a witch?" asked Ralph, blundering as an honest and bashful man may in times of distress into the boldest speech.
"You want to go up and see my grandmother, do you not?" said Winsome, gravely, for such conversation was not to be continued on any conditions.
"Yes," said the young man, perjuring himself with a readiness and facility most unbecoming in a student desiring letters of probation from the Protesting and Covenant-keeping Kirk of the Marrow.
Ralph Peden lightly picked up the books, which, as Winsome knew, were some considerable weight to carry.
"Do you find them quite safe?" she asked.
"There was a heavy dew last night," he answered, "but in spite of it they seem quite dry.
"We often notice the same thing on Loch Grannoch side," said Winsome.
"I thought--that is, I was under the impression--that I had left a small book with some manuscript notes!" said the young man, tentatively.
"It may have dropped among the broom," replied the simple maid.
Whereupon the two set to seeking, both bareheaded, brown cropped head and golden wilderness of tresses not far from one another, while the "book of manuscript notes" rose and fell to the quickened heart-beating of that wicked and deceitful girl, Winsome Charteris.