The Lilac Sunbonnet | Page 4

quieter in James's

Court."
Still he smiled a little to himself, for the broom did not grow in James's
Court, nor the blackbirds flute their mellow whistle there.
Loch Grannoch stretched away three miles to the south, basking in
alternate blue and white, as cloud and sky mirrored themselves upon it.
The first broad rush of the ling [Footnote: Common heath (Erica
tetralix).] was climbing the slopes of the Crae Hill above --a pale
lavender near the loch-side, deepening to crimson on the dryer slopes
where the heath-bells grew shorter and thicker together. The wimpling
lane slid as silently away from the sleeping loch as though it were
eloping and feared to awake an angry parent. The whole range of hill
and wood and water was drenched in sunshine. Silence clothed it like a
garment--save only for the dark of the shadow under the bridge, from
whence had come that ring of girlish laughter which had jarred upon
the nerves of Ralph Peden.
Suddenly there emerged from the indigo shade where the blue spruces
overarched the bridge a girl carrying two shining pails of water. Her
arms were bare, her sleeves being rolled high above her elbow; and her
figure, tall and shapely, swayed gracefully to the movement of the pails.
Ralph did not know before that there is an art in carrying water. He was
ignorant of many things, but even with his views on woman's place in
the economy of the universe, he could not but be satisfied with the
fitness and the beauty of the girl who came up the path, swinging her
pails with the compensatory sway of lissom body, and that strong
outward flex of the elbow which kept the brimming cans swinging in
safety by her side.
Ralph Peden never took his eyes off her as she came, the theories of
James's Court notwithstanding. Nor indeed need we for a little. For this
is Winifred, better known as Winsome Charteris, a very important
young person indeed, to whose beauty and wit the poets of three
parishes did vain reverence; and, what she might well value more,
whose butter was the best (and commanded the highest price) of any
that went into Dumfries market on Wednesdays.

Fair hair, crisping and tendrilling over her brow, swept back in loose
and flossy circlets till caught close behind her head by a tiny ribbon of
blue--then again escaping it went scattering and wavering over her
shoulders wonderingly, like nothing on earth but Winsome Charteris's
hair. It was small wonder that the local poets grew grey before their
time in trying to find a rhyme for "sunshine," a substantive which, for
the first time, they had applied to a girl's hair. For the rest, a face rather
oval than long, a nose which the schoolmaster declared was
"statuesque" (used in a good sense, he explained to the village folk,
who could never be brought to see the difference between a statue and
an idol--the second commandment being of literal interpretation along
the Loch Grannoch side), and eyes which, emulating the parish poet,
we can only describe as like two blue waves when they rise just far
enough to catch a sparkle of light on their crests. The subject of her
mouth, though tempting, we refuse to touch. Its description has already
wrecked three promising reputations.
But withal Winsome Charteris set her pails as frankly and plumply on
the ground, as though she were plain as a pike-staff, and bent a moment
over to look into the gypsy-pot swung on its birchen triangle. Then she
made an impatient movement of her hand, as if to push the biting
fir-wood smoke aside. This angered Ralph, who considered it
ridiculous and ill-ordered that a gesture which showed only a hasty
temper and ill-regulated mind should be undeniably pretty and pleasant
to look upon, just because it was made by a girl's hand. He was angry
with himself, yet he hoped she would do it again. Instead, she took up
one pail of water after the other, swung them upward with a single
dexterous movement, and poured the water into the pot, from which the
steam was rising. Ralph Peden could see the sunlight sparkle in the
water as it arched itself solidly out of the pails. He was not near enough
to see the lilac sprig on her light summer gown; but the lilac sunbonnet
which she wore, principally it seemed in order that it might hang by the
strings upon her shoulders, was to Ralph a singularly attractive piece of
colour in the landscape. This he did not resent, because it is always safe
to admire colour.
Ralph would have been glad to have been able to slip off quietly to the

manse. He told himself so over and over again, till he believed