One day, after Dolly had been a fortnight at Upcombe, the Compsons gave a picnic in the wild Combe undercliff.  ’Tis a broken wall of chalk, tumbled picturesquely about in huge shattered masses, and deliciously overgrown with ferns and blackthorn and golden clusters of close-creeping rock-rose.  Mazy paths thread tangled labyrinths of fallen rock, or wind round tall clumps of holly-bush and bramble.  They lighted their fire under the lee of one such buttress of broken cliff, whose summit was festooned with long sprays of clematis, or “old man’s beard,” as the common west-country name expressively phrases it.  Thistledown hovered on the basking air.  There they sat and drank their tea, couched on beds of fern or propped firm against the rock; and when tea was over, they wandered off, two and two, ostensibly for nothing, but really for the true business of the picnic—­to afford the young men and maidens of the group some chance of enjoying, unspied, one another’s society.

Dolly and Walter Brydges strolled off by themselves toward the rocky shore.  There Walter showed her where a brook bubbled clear from the fountain-head; by its brink, blue veronicas grew, and tall yellow loosestrife, and tasselled purple heads of great English eupatory.  Bending down to the stream he picked a little bunch of forget-me-nots, and handed them to her.  Dolly pretended unconsciously to pull the dainty blossoms to pieces, as she sat on the clay bank hard by and talked with him.  “Is that how you treat my poor flowers?” Walter asked, looking askance at her.

Dolly glanced down, and drew back suddenly.  “Oh, poor little things!” she cried, with a quick droop of her long lashes.  “I wasn’t thinking what I did.”  And she darted a shy glance at him.  “If I’d remembered they were forget-me-nots, I don’t think I could have done it.”

She looked so sweet and pure in her budding innocence, like a half-blown water-lily, that the young man, already more than two-thirds in love, was instantly captivated.  “Because they were forget-me-nots, or because they were mine, Miss Barton?” he asked softly, all timorousness.

“Perhaps a little of both,” the girl answered, gazing down, and blushing at each word a still deeper crimson.

The blush showed sweet on that translucent skin.  Walter turned to her with a sudden impulse.  “And what are you going to do with them now?” he enquired, holding his breath for joy and half-suppressed eagerness.

Dolly hesitated a moment with genuine modesty.  Then her liking for the well-knit young man overcame her.  With a frightened smile her hand stole to her bodice; she fixed them in her bosom.  “Will that do?” she asked timidly.

“Yes, that will do,” the young man answered, bending forward and seizing her soft fingers in his own.  “That will do very well.  And, Miss Barton—­Dolores—­I take it as a sign you don’t wholly dislike me.”

“I like you very much,” Dolly answered in a low voice, pulling a rock-rose from a cleft and tearing it nervously to pieces.