“Well, let us,” said Ralph Peden, the student in divinity, daringly.

Winsome did not even glance up.  Of course, she could not have heard, or she would have been angry at the preposterous suggestion.  She thought awhile, and then said: 

“I think that, more than anything in the world, I love to sit by a waterside and make stories and sing songs to the rustle of the leaves as the wind sifts among them, and dream dreams all by myself.”

Her eyes became very thoughtful.  She seemed to be on the eve of dreaming a dream now.

Ralph felt he must go away.  He was trespassing on the pleasaunce of an angel.

“What do you like most?  What would you like best to do in all the world?” she asked him.

“To sit with you by the waterside and watch you dream,” said Ralph, whose education was proceeding by leaps and bounds.

Winsome risked a glance at him, though well aware that it was dangerous.

“You are easily satisfied,” she said; “then let us do it now.”

So Ralph and Winsome sat down like boy and girl on the fallen trunk of a fir-tree, which lay across the water, and swung their feet to the rhythm of the wimpling burn beneath.

“I think you had better sit at the far side of that branch,” said Winsome, suspiciously, as Ralph, compelled by the exigencies of the position, settled himself precariously near to her section of the tree-trunk.

“What is the matter with this?” asked Ralph, with an innocent look.  Now no one counterfeits innocence worse than a really innocent man who attempts to be more innocent than he is.

So Winsome looked at him with reproach in her eyes, and slowly she shook her head.  “It might do very well for Jess Kissock, but for me it will balance better if you sit on the other side of the branch.  We can talk just as well.”

Ralph had thought no more of Jess Kissock and her flower from the moment he had seen Winsome.  Indeed, the posy had dropped unregarded from his button-hole while he was gathering up the trout.  There it had lain till Winsome, who had seen it fall, accidentally set her foot on it and stamped it into the grass.  This indicates, like a hand on a dial, the stage of her prepossession.  A day before she had nothing regarded a flower given to Ralph Peden; and in a little while, when the long curve has at last been turned, she will not regard it, though a hundred women give flowers to the beloved.

“I told you I should come,” said Ralph, beginning the personal tale which always waits at the door, whatever lovers may say when they first meet.  Winsome was meditating a conversation about the scenery of the dell.  She needed also some botanical information which should aid her in the selection of plants for a herbarium.  But on this occasion Ralph was too quick for her.  “I told you I should come,” said Ralph boldly, “and so you see I am here,” he concluded, rather lamely.