The Lilac Sunbonnet | Page 6

he had
come out to see.
Yet it was impossible to rise composedly and take his way manseward.
Ralph wished now that he had gone at the first alarm. It had become so
much more difficult now, as indeed it always does in such cases.
Moreover, he was certain that these two vagabonds of curs would
return. And they would be sure to find him out. Dogs were unnecessary
and inconvenient beasts, always sniffing and nosing about. He decided
to wait. The new-comer of the kilts was after all no Naiad or Hebe. Her
outlines did not resemble to any marked degree the plates in his
excellent classical dictionary. She was not short in stature, but so strong
and of a complexion so ruddily beaming above the reaming white
which filled the blanket tub, that her mirthful face shone like the sun
through an evening mist.
But Ralph did not notice that, in so far as she could, she had relieved
the taller maiden of the heavier share of the work; and that her laugh
was hung on a hair trigger, to go off at every jest and fancy of
Winsome Charteris. All this is to introduce Miss Meg Kissock, chief
and favoured maidservant at the Dullarg farm, and devoted worshipper
of Winsome, the young mistress thereof. Meg indeed, would have
thanked no one for an introduction, being at all times well able (and
willing) to introduce herself.
It had been a shock to Ralph Peden when Meg Kissock walked up from
the lane-side barefoot, and when she cleared the decks for the blanket
tramping. But he had seen something like it before on the banks of the
water of Leith, then running clear and limpid over its pebbles, save for
a flour-mill or two on the lower reaches. But it was altogether another
thing when, plain as print, he saw his first goddess of the shining

water-pails sit calmly down on the great granite boulder in the shadow
of the bridge, and take one small foot in her hand with the evident
intention of removing her foot-gear and occupying the second tub.
The hot blood surged in responsive shame to Ralph Peden's cheeks and
temples. He started up. Meg Kissock was tramping the blankets
rhythmically, holding her green kirtle well up with both hands, and
singing with all her might. The goddess of the shining pails was also
happily unconscious, with her face to the running water. Ralph bent
low and hastened through a gap in the fence towards the shade of the
elder bushes on the slope. He did not run--he has never acknowledged
that; but he certainly came almost indistinguishably near it. As soon,
however, as he was really out of sight, he actually did take to his heels
and run in the direction of the manse, disconcerted and demoralized.
The dogs completed his discomfiture, for they caught sight of his flying
figure and gave chase--contenting themselves, however, with pausing
on the hillside where Ralph had been lying, with indignant barkings
and militant tails high crested in air.
Winsome Charteris went up to the broom bushes which fringed the
slope to find out what was the matter with Tyke and Roger. When she
got there, a slim black figure was just vanishing round the white bend
of the Far Away Turn. Winsome whistled low this time, and without
putting even one finger into her mouth.
CHAPTER II.
THE MOTHER OF KING LEMUEL.
It was not till Ralph Peden had returned to the study of the manse of the
Marrow kirk of Dullarg, and the colour induced by exercise had had
time to die out of his naturally pale cheeks, that he remembered that he
had left his Hebrew Bible and Lexicon, as well as a half-written
exegesis on an important subject, underneath the fatal whin bush above
the bridge over the Grannoch water. He would have been glad to rise
and seek it immediately--a task which, indeed, no longer presented
itself in such terrible colours to him. He found himself even anxious to

go. It would be a serious thing were he to lose his father's Lexicon and
Mr. Welsh's Hebrew Bible. Moreover, he could not bear the thought of
leaving the sheets of his exposition of the last chapter of Proverbs to be
the sport of the gamesome Galloway winds--or, worse thought, the
laughing-stock of gamesome young women who whistled with two
fingers in their mouths.
Yet the picture of the maid of the loch which rose before him struck
him as no unpleasant one. He remembered for one thing how the sun
shone through the tangle of her hair. But he had quite forgotten, on the
other hand, at what part of his exegesis he had left off. It was, however,
a manifest impossibility for him to