tentatively.

"It may have dropped among the broom," replied the simple maid.

Whereupon the two set to seeking, both bareheaded, brown cropped
head and golden wilderness of tresses not far from one another,
while the "book of manuscript notes" rose and fell to the
quickened heart-beating of that wicked and deceitful girl, Winsome
Charteris.





CHAPTER VI.

CURLED EYELASHES.


Now Meg Kissock could stand a great deal, and she would put up
with a great deal to pleasure her mistress; but half an hour of
loneliness down by the washing was overly much for her, and the
struggle between loyalty and curiosity ended, after the manner of
her sex, in the victory of the latter.

As Ralph and Winsome continued to seek, they came time and again
close together and the propinquity of flushed cheek and mazy
ringlet stirred something in the lad's heart which had never been
touched by the Mistresses Thriepneuk, who lived where the new
houses of the Plainstones look over the level meadows of the