Sober is not always that which sober looks, and it may be that Grace Hutchison had no objections to a little sedate merriment with this young man.  It was serious enough down at the manse, in all conscience; and every young man in the parish stood ten yards off when he spoke to Miss Hutchison.  She had not been at a party since she left the Ministers’ Daughters’ College two years ago, and then all the young men were carefully selected and edited by the lady principal.  And Grace Hutchison was nineteen.  Think of that, maids of the many invitations!

The young master’s attempts to tie the handkerchief were ludicrous in the extreme.  One corner kept falling over and flicking into his eye, so that he seemed to be persistently winking at her with that eyelid, a proceeding which would certainly not have been allowed at the parties of the Ministers’ Daughters’ College with the consent of the authorities—­at least not in Grace’s time.

“Oh, how stupid you are!” said Grace, putting a pin into her mouth to be ready; “let me do it.”

She spoke just as if she had been getting her father ready for church.

She settled the handkerchief about Duncan Rowallan’s head with one or two little tugs to the side.  Then she took the pin out of her mouth and pinned it beneath his chin, in a way mightily practical, which the youth admired.

“Now, then,” she said, stepping back to put on her own hat, fastening it with a dangerous-looking weapon of war shaped like a stiletto, thrust most recklessly in.

The two young people stood in the lee of the plantation on the corner of the glebe, which had been planted by Dr. Hutchison’s predecessor, an old bachelor whose part in life had been to plant trees for other people to make love under.

But there was no love made that day—­only a little talk on equal terms concerning Edinburgh and Professor Ramage’s, where on an eve of tea and philosophy it was conceivable that they might have met.  Only, as a matter of fact they did not.  But at least there were a great many wonderful things which might have happened.  And the time flew.

But in the mid-stream of interest Grace Hutchison recollected herself.

“It is time for my father’s lunch.  I must go in,” she said.

And she went.  She had forgotten her duties for more than half an hour.

But even as she went, she turned and said simply, “You may keep the handkerchief till you find your cap.”

“Thank you,” said Duncan, watching her so soberly that the white cap on his head did not look ridiculous—­at least not to Grace.

As soon as she was out of sight he took off the handkerchief carefully, and put it, pin and all, into the leather case in his inner pocket where he had been accustomed to keep his matriculation card.

He looked down at the kirkyard wall over which his cap had flown.

“Oh, hang the cap!” he said; “what’s about a cap, any way?”