Winsome was looking at him now, for he had looked away in his turn, lost in a poet’s thought.  It struck her for the first time that other people might think him handsome.  When a girl forgets to think whether she herself is of this opinion, and begins to think what others will think on a subject like this (which really does not concern her at all), the proceedings in the case are not finished.

They walked on together down by the sunny edge of the great plantation.  The sun was now rising well into the sky, climbing directly upward as if on this midsummer day he were leading a forlorn hope to scale the zenith of heaven.  He shone on the russet tassels of the larches, and the deep sienna boles of the Scotch firs.  The clouds, which rolled fleecy and white in piles and crenulated bastions of cumulus, lighted the eyes of the man and maid as they went onward upon the crisping piny carpet of fallen fir-needles.

“I have never seen Nature so lovely,” said Ralph, “as when the bright morning breaks after a night of shower.  Everything seems to have been new bathed in freshness.”

“As if Dame Nature had had her spring cleaning,” answered Winsome, “or Andrew Kissock when he has had his face washed once a week,” who had been serious long enough, and who felt that too much earnestness even in the study of Nature might be a dangerous thing.

But the inner thought of each was something quite different.  This is what Ralph thought within his heart, though his words were also perfectly genuine: 

“There is a dimple on her chin which comes out when she smiles,” so he wanted her to smile again.  When she did so, she was lovely enough to peril the Faith or even the denomination.

Ralph tried to recollect if there were no more stiles on this hill path over which she might have to be helped.  He had taken off his hat and walked beside her bareheaded, carrying his hat in the hand farthest from Winsome, who was wondering how soon she would be able to tell him that he must keep his shoulders back.

Winsome was not a young woman of great experience in these matters, but she had the natural instinct for the possibilities of love without which no woman comes into the world—­at once armour defensive and weapon offensive.  She knew that one day Ralph Peden would tell her that he loved her, but in the meantime it was so very pleasant that it was a pity the days should come to an end.  So she resolved that they should not, at least not just yet.  If to-morrow be good, why confine one’s self to to-day?  She had not yet faced the question of what she would say to him when the day could be no longer postponed.  She did not care to face it.  Sufficient unto the day is the good thereof, is quite as excellent a precept as its counterpart, or at least so Winsome Charteris thought.  But, all the same, she wished that she could tell him to keep his shoulders back.

A sudden resolve sprang full armed from her brain.  Winsome had that strange irresponsibility sometimes which comes irresistibly to some men and women in youth, to say something as an experiment which she well knew she ought not to say, simply to see what would happen.  More than once it had got her into trouble.