In a little while Meg was in Winsome’s room.  The greyish light of early morning was just peeping in past the little curtain.  On the chair lay the lilac-sprigged muslin dress of her grandmother’s, which Winsome had meant to put on next morning to the kirk.  Her face lay sideways on the pillow, and Meg could see that she was softly crying even in her sleep.  Meg stood over her a moment.  Something hard lay beneath Winsome’s cheek, pressing into its soft rounding.  Meg tenderly slipped it out.  It was an ordinary memorandum-book written with curious signs.  On the pillow by her lay the lilac sunbonnet.

Meg put her arms gently round Winsome, saying: 

“It’s me, my lamb.  It’s me, your Meg!”

And Meg’s cheek was pressed against that of Winsome, moist with sleep.  The sleeper stirred with a dovelike moaning, and opened her eyes, dark with sleep and wet with the tears of dreams, upon Meg.

“Waken, my bonnie; Meg has something that she maun tell ye.”

So Winsome looked round with the wild fear with which she now started from all her sleeps; but the strong arms of her loyal Meg were about her, and she only smiled with a vague wistfulness, and said: 

“It’s you, Meg, my dear!”

So into her ear Meg whispered her tale.  As she went on, Winsome clasped her round the neck, and thrust her face into the neck of Meg’s drugget gown.  This is the same girl who had set the ploughmen their work and appointed to each worker about the farm her task.  It seems necessary to say so.

“Noo,” said Meg, when she had finished, “ye ken whether ye want to see him or no!”

“Meg,” whispered Winsome, “can I let him go away to Edinburgh and maybe never see me again, without a word?”

“Ye ken that best yersel’,” said Meg with high impartiality, but with her comforting arms very close about her darling.

“I think,” said Winsome, the tears very near the lids of her eyes, “that I had better not see him.  I—­I do not wish to see him—­Meg,” she said earnestly; “go and tell him not to see me any more, and not to think of a girl like me—­”

Meg went to Winsome’s little cupboard wardrobe in the wall and took down the old lilac-sprayed summer gown which she had worn when she first saw Ralph Peden.

“Ye had better rise, my lassie, an’ tak’ that message yersel’!” said Meg dryly.

So obediently Winsome rose.  Meg helped her to dress, holding silently her glimmering white garments for her as she had done when first as a fairy child she came to Craig Ronald.  Some of them were a little roughly held, for Meg could not see quite so clearly as usual.  Also when she spoke her speech sounded more abruptly and harshly than was its wont.

At last the girl’s attire was complete, and Winsome stood ready for her morning walk fresh as the dew on the white lilies.  Meg tied the strings of the old sunbonnet beneath her sweet chin, and stepped back to look at the effect; then, with sudden impulsive movement, she went tumultuously forward and kissed her mistress on the cheek.