Suddenly there emerged from the indigo shade where the blue
spruces overarched the bridge a girl carrying two shining pails of
water. Her arms were bare, her sleeves being rolled high above her
elbow; and her figure, tall and shapely, swayed gracefully to the
movement of the pails. Ralph did not know before that there is an
art in carrying water. He was ignorant of many things, but even
with his views on woman's place in the economy of the universe, he
could not but be satisfied with the fitness and the beauty of the
girl who came up the path, swinging her pails with the
compensatory sway of lissom body, and that strong outward flex of
the elbow which kept the brimming cans swinging in safety by her
side.

Ralph Peden never took his eyes off her as she came, the theories
of James's Court notwithstanding. Nor indeed need we for a little.
For this is Winifred, better known as Winsome Charteris, a very
important young person indeed, to whose beauty and wit the poets
of three parishes did vain reverence; and, what she might well
value more, whose butter was the best (and commanded the highest
price) of any that went into Dumfries market on Wednesdays.

Fair hair, crisping and tendrilling over her brow, swept back in
loose and flossy circlets till caught close behind her head by a
tiny ribbon of blue--then again escaping it went scattering and
wavering over her shoulders wonderingly, like nothing on earth but
Winsome Charteris's hair. It was small wonder that the local poets
grew grey before their time in trying to find a rhyme for
"sunshine," a substantive which, for the first time, they had
applied to a girl's hair. For the rest, a face rather oval than