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They met–he beneath, she above on the whinny braeface. Her hair, usually so smooth, blew out towards him in love-locks and witch-tangles. For the first time in his life Duncan saw a faint colour in the cheeks of the minister’s daughter.

The teacher of the village school found himself apologising, he was not quite sure for what. He held the hat out a little awkwardly.

“I found it,” he said, not knowing what else to say.

This description of his undignified progress as he rattled down the face of the hill after the whirling hat amused Grace Hutchison, and she laughed a little, which helped things wonderfully.

“But you have lost your own cap,” she said, looking at his cropped blond poll without disapproval.

“It does not matter,” said Duncan, rubbing it all over with his hand as though the action would render it waterproof.

Now, Grace Hutchison was accustomed to domineer over her father in household matters, such as the care of his person; so it occurred to her that she ought to order this young man to go and look after his cap. But she did not. On the contrary, she took a handkerchief out of her pocket, disentangling it mysteriously from the recesses of flapping skirts.

“Put that over your head till you get your own,” she said.

Sober is not always that which sober looks, and it may be that Grace Hutchison had no objections to a little sedate merriment with this young man. It was serious enough down at the manse, in all conscience; and every young man in the parish stood ten yards off when he spoke to Miss Hutchison. She had not been at a party since she left the Ministers’ Daughters’ College two years ago, and then all the young men were carefully selected and edited by the lady principal. And Grace Hutchison was nineteen. Think of that, maids of the many invitations!

The young master’s attempts to tie the handkerchief were ludicrous in the extreme. One corner kept falling over and flicking into his eye, so that he seemed to be persistently winking at her with that eyelid, a proceeding which would certainly not have been allowed at the parties of the Ministers’ Daughters’ College with the consent of the authorities–at least not in Grace’s time.

“Oh, how stupid you are!” said Grace, putting a pin into her mouth to be ready; “let me do it.”

She spoke just as if she had been getting her father ready for church.

She settled the handkerchief about Duncan Rowallan’s head with one or two little tugs to the side. Then she took the pin out of her mouth and pinned it beneath his chin, in a way mightily practical, which the youth admired.

“Now, then,” she said, stepping back to put on her own hat, fastening it with a dangerous-looking weapon of war shaped like a stiletto, thrust most recklessly in.

The two young people stood in the lee of the plantation on the corner of the glebe, which had been planted by Dr. Hutchison’s predecessor, an old bachelor whose part in life had been to plant trees for other people to make love under.

But there was no love made that day–only a little talk on equal terms concerning Edinburgh and Professor Ramage’s, where on an eve of tea and philosophy it was conceivable that they might have met. Only, as a matter of fact they did not. But at least there were a great many wonderful things which might have happened. And the time flew.

But in the mid-stream of interest Grace Hutchison recollected herself.

“It is time for my father’s lunch. I must go in,” she said.

And she went. She had forgotten her duties for more than half an hour.

But even as she went, she turned and said simply, “You may keep the handkerchief till you find your cap.”

“Thank you,” said Duncan, watching her so soberly that the white cap on his head did not look ridiculous–at least not to Grace.