"That he should dare--the idea!"

But it so happened that the idea so touched that rare gift of
humour, and the picture of herself looking at Ralph Peden solemnly
with one eye at a time, in order at once to spare his
susceptibilities and give the other a rest, was too much for her.
She laughed a peal of rippling merriment that sent all the
blackbirds indignant out of their copses at the infringement of
their prerogative.

Ralph's humour was slower and a little grimmer than Winsome's,
whose sunny nature had blossomed out amid the merry life of the
woods and streams. But there was a sternness in both of them as
well, that was of the heather and the moss hags. And that would in
due time come out. It is now their day of love and bounding life.
And there are few people in this world who would not be glad to
sit just so at the opening of the flower of love. Indeed, it was
hardly necessary to tell one another.

Laughter, say the French (who think that their l'amour is love,
and so will never know anything), kills love. But not the kind of
laughter that rang in the open dell which peeped like the end of a
great green-lined prospect glass upon the glimmering levels of
Loch Grannoch; nor yet the kind of love which in alternate
currents pulsed to and fro between the two young people who sat so
demurely on either side of the great, many-spiked fir-branch.

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