"We had better go down!"

So they went down, taking the little stile at which Winsome had
meditated over the remarks of Ralph Peden concerning the creation
of Eve upon their way. Meg Kissock led the van, and took the dyke
vigorously without troubling the steps, her kirtle fitting her for
such exercises. Winsome came next, and Ralph stood aside to let
her pass. She sprang up the low steps light as a feather, rested
her fingertips for an appreciable fraction of a second on the hand
which he instinctively held out, and was over before he realized
that anything had happened. Yet it seemed that in that contact,
light as a rose-leaf blown by the winds of late July against his
cheek, his past life had been shorn clean away from all the future
as with a sharp sword.

Ralph Peden had dutifully kissed his cousins Jemima, Kezia, and
Kerenhappuch; but, on the whole, he had felt more pleasure when he
had partaken of the excellent bannocks prepared for him by the
fair hands of Kerenhappuch herself. But this was wholly a new
thing. His breath came suddenly short. He breathed rapidly as
though to give his lungs more air. The atmosphere seemed to have
grown rarer and colder. Indeed, it was a different world, and the
blanket-washing itself was transferred to some deliciously homely
outlying annex of paradise.

Yet it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should
be helping this girl, and he went forward with the greatest
assurance to lift the black pot off the fire for her. The keen,
acrid swirls of wood-smoke blew into his eyes, and the rank steam