“Is not this nice?” said Winsome, shrugging her shoulders contentedly and swinging her feet.

Their laughter made them better friends than before.  The responsive gladness in each other’s eyes seemed part of the midsummer stillness of the afternoon.  Above, a red squirrel dropped the husks of larch tassels upon them, and peered down upon them with his bright eyes.  He was thinking himself of household duties, and had his own sweetheart safe at home, nestling in the bowl of a great beech deep in the bowering wood by the loch.

“I liked to hear you speak of your father to-day,” said Winsome, still swinging her feet girlishly.  “It must be a great delight to have a father to go to.  I never remember father or mother.”

Her eyes were looking straight before her now, and a depth of tender wistfulness in them went to Ralph’s heart.  He was beginning to hate the branch.

“My father,” he said, “is often stern to others, but he has never been stern to me—­always helpful, full of tenderness and kindness.  Perhaps that is because I lost my mother almost before I can remember.”

Winsome’s wet eyes, with the lashes curving long over the under side of the dark-blue iris, were turned full on him now with the tenderness of a kindred pity.

“Do you know I think that your father was once kind to my mother.  Grandmother began once to tell me, and then all at once would tell me no more—­I think because grandfather was there.”

“I did not know that my father ever knew your mother,” answered Ralph.

“Of course, he would never tell you if he did,” said the woman of experience, sagely; “but grandmother has a portrait in an oval miniature of your father as a young man, and my mother’s name is on the back of it.”

“Her maiden name?” queried Ralph.

Winsome Charteris nodded.  Then she said wistfully:  “I wish I knew all about it.  I think it is very hard that grandmother will not tell me!”

Then, after a silence which a far-off cuckoo filled in with that voice of his which grows slower and fainter as the midsummer heats come on, Winsome said abruptly, “Is your father ever hard and—­ unkind?”

Ralph started to his feet as if hastily to defend his father.  There was something in Winsome’s eyes that made him sit down again—­something shining and tender and kind.

“My father,” he said, “is very silent and reserved, as I fear I too have been till I came down here” (he meant to say, “Till I met you, dear,” but he could not manage it), “but he is never hard or unkind, except perhaps on matters connected with the Marrow kirk and its order and discipline.  Then he becomes like a stone, and has no pity for himself or any.  I remember him once forbidding me to come into the study, and compelling me to keep my own garret-room for a month, for saying that I did not see much difference between the Marrow kirk and the other kirks.  But I am sure he could never be unkind or hurtful to any one in the world.  But why do you ask, Mistress Winsome?”