"I wonder why--I wonder that you are able to do all this work," he
said, with an attempt to turn the corner of his blunder.

Winsome shook her head.

"Now you are trying to be like other people," she said; "I do not
think you will succeed. That was not what you were going to say.
If you are to be my friend, you must speak all the truth to me and
speak it always." A thing which, indeed, no man does to a woman.
And, besides, nobody had spoken of Ralph Peden being a friend to
her. The meaning was that their hearts had been talking while
their tongues had spoken of other things; and though there was no
thought of love in the breast of Winsome Charteris, already in the
intercourse of a single morning she had given this young Edinburgh
student of divinity a place which no other had ever attained to.
Had she had a brother, she thought, what would he not have been to
her? She felt specially fitted to have a brother. It did not occur
to her to ask whether she would have carried her brother's college
note-book, even by accident, where it could be stirred by the
beating of her heart.

"Well," Ralph said at last, "I will tell you what I was wondering.
You have asked me, and you shall know: I only wondered why your
eyelashes were so much darker than your hair."

Winsome Charteris was not in the least disturbed.

"Ministers should occupy their minds with something else," she
said, demurely. "What would Mr. Welsh say? I am sure he has never
troubled his head about such things. It is not fitting," Winsome