The Lilac Sunbonnet | Page 8

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type, Ralph Peden's beautiful Hellenic script), "alas, that the good qualities of the housewives of Solomon's days are out of date and forgotten in these degenerate times!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 half before the sun looked over the crest of Ben Gairn. They were humming busily still. In all the chambers of the house there was the same reposeful stillness. Through them Winsome Charteris moved with free, light step. She glanced in to see that her grandfather and grandmother were wanting for nothing in their cool and wide sitting-room, where the brown mahogany-cased eight- day clock kept up an unequal ticking, like a man walking upon two wooden legs of which one is shorter than the other.
It said something for Winsome Charteris and her high-hearted courage, that what she was accustomed to see in that