The Lilac Sunbonnet | Page 8

from the bridge end showed signs of coming up to see what
she was about; but Winsome imperiously checked the movement.
"Bide where you are, Meg; I'll be down with you presently."
She turned over the great Hebrew Bible reverently. "A. Welsh" was
written on the fly-leaf. She had a strange idea that she had seen it
before. It seemed somehow thrillingly familiar.
"That's the minister's Hebrew Bible book, no doubt," she said. "For

that's the same kind of printing as between the double verses of the
hundred-and-nineteenth Psalm in my grandfather's big Bible," she
continued, sapiently shaking her head till the crispy ringlets tumbled
about her eyes, and she had impatiently to toss them aside.
She laid the Bible down and peeped into the other strange-looking book.
There were single words here of the same kind as in the other, but the
most part was in ordinary type, though in a language of which she
could make nothing. The note-book was a resource. It was at least
readable, and Winsome Charteris began expectantly to turn it over. But
something stirred reprovingly in her heart. It seemed as if she were
listening to a conversation not meant for her. So she kept her finger on
the leaf, but did not turn it.
"No," she said, "I will not read it. It is not meant for me." Then, after a
pause, "At least I will only read this page which is open, and then look
at the beginning to see whose it is; for, you know, I may need to send it
back to him." The back she had seen vanish round the Far Away Turn
demanded the masculine pronoun.
She lifted the book and read:
"Alas!" (so ran the writing, fluent and clear, small as printer's type,
Ralph Peden's beautiful Hellenic script), "alas, that the good qualities
of the housewives of Solomon's days are out of date and forgotten in
these degenerate times! Women, especially the younger of them, are
become gadabouts, chatterers in the public ways, idle, adorners of their
vain selves, pamperers of their frail tabernacles--"
Winsome threw down the book and almost trod upon it as upon a
snake.
"'Tis some city fop," she said, stamping her foot, "who is tired of the
idle town dames. I wonder if he has ever seen the sun rise or done a
day's work in his life? If only I had the wretch! But I will read no
more!"
In token of the sincerity of the last assertion, she picked up the

note-book again. There was little more to read. It was at this point that
the humble-bee had startled the writer.
But underneath there were woids faintly scrawled in pencil: "Must
concentrate attention"--"The proper study of mankind is"--this last
written twice, as if the writer were practising copy-lines absently. Then
at the very bottom was written, so faintly that hardly any eyes but
Winsome's could have read the words:
"Of all colours I do love the lilac. I wonder all maids do not wear gear
of that hue!"
"Oh!" said Winsome Charteris quickly.
Then she gathered up the books very gently, and taking a kerchief from
her neck, she folded the two great books within it, fastening them with
a cunning knot. She was carrying them slowly up towards the farm
town of Craig Ronald in her bare arms when Ralph Peden sat
answering his catechism in the study at the manse. She entered the
dreaming courtyard, and walked sedately across its silent sun- flooded
spaces without a sound. She passed the door of the cool parlour where
her grandfather and grandmother sat, the latter with her hands folded
and her great tortoiseshell spectacles on her nose, taking her afternoon
nap. A volume of Waverley lay beside her. Into her own white little
room Winsome went, and laid the bundle of books in the bottom of the
wall-press, which was lined with sheets of the Cairn Edward
Miscellany. She looked at it some time before she shut the door.
"His name is Ralph," she said. "I wonder how old he is--I shall know
tomorrow, because he will come back; but--I would like to know
tonight."
She sighed a little--so light a breath that it was only the dream of a sigh.
Then she looked at the lilac sunbonnet, as if it ought to have known.
"At any rate he has very good taste," she said.
But the lilac sunbonnet said never a word.

CHAPTER IV.
A CAVALIER PURITAN.
The farm town of Craig Ronald drowsed in the quiet of noon. In the
open court the sunshine triumphed, and only the purple-grey marsh
mallows along the side of the house under the windows gave any sign
of life. In them the bees had begun to hum at earliest dawn, an hour and
a