“And you love me?” he continued, reading her eyes.  With her old ripple of laughter she lightened the strain of the occasion.

“You are a silly boy,” she said; “but you’ll learn.  I have come out to gather flowers,” she added, ingenuously.  “I shall expect you to help.  No—­no—­and nothing else.”

Had Ralph been in a fit condition to observe Nature this morning, it might have occurred to him that when girls come out to gather flowers for somewhat extensive decoration, they bring with them at least a basket and generally also their fourth best pair of scissors.  Winsome had neither.  But he was not in a mood for careful inductions.

The morning lights sprayed upon them as they went hither and thither gathering flowers—­dew-drenched hyacinths, elastic wire-strung bluebells the colour of the sky when the dry east wind blows, the first great red bushes of the ling.  Now it is a known fact that, in order properly to gather flowers, the collectors must divide and so quarter the ground.

“But this was not a scientific expedition,” said Ralph, when the folly of their mode of proceeding was pointed out to him.

It was manifestly impossible that they could gather flowers walking with the palm of Ralph’s left hand laid on the inside of Winsome’s left arm.  The thing cannot be done.  At least so Ralph admitted afterwards.

“No,” said Ralph, “but you made me promise to keep my shoulders back, and I am trying to to do it now.”

And his manner of assisting Winsome to gather her flowers for her wedding bouquet was, when you come to think of it, admirably adapted for keeping the shoulders back.

“Meg waked me this morning,” said Winsome suddenly.

“She did, did she?” remarked Ralph ineffectively, with a quick envy of Meg.  Then it occurred to him that he had no need to envy Meg.  And Winsome blushed for no reason at all.

Then she became suddenly practical, as the protective instinct teaches women to be on these occasions.

“You have not seen your study,” she said.

“No,” said Ralph, “but I have heard enough about it.  It has occupied sixteen pages in the last three letters.”

Ralph considered the study a good thing, but he had his views upon the composition of love-letters.

“You are an ungrateful boy,” said Winsome sternly, “and I shall see that you get no more letters—­not any more!”

“I shall never want any, little woman,” cried Ralph joyously, “for I shall have you!”

It was a blessing that at this moment they were passing under the dense shade of the great oaks at the foot of the orchard.  Winsome had thought for five minutes that it would happen about there.  It happened.

A quarter of an hour later they came out into the cool ocean of leaf shadow which lay blue upon the grass and daisies.  Winsome now carried the sunbonnet over her arm, and in the morning sunshine her uncovered head was so bright that Ralph could not gaze at it long.  Besides, he wanted to look at the eyes that looked at him, and one cannot do everything at once.