The other made no answer. They went slowly on and on, getting up to the higher ground and more level going, while the sun's rays coming a little more slant as the afternoon declined, gave an increasing picturesqueness to the scene. Mr. Shubrick had been for some time almost entirely silent, when Dolly proposed to stop and rest.
"One enjoys it better so," she said. "One has better leisure to look. And I wanted to talk to you, besides."
Her companion was very willing, and they took their places under a great oak, on the swell of greensward at the foot of it. Ground and grass and moss were all dry. Dolly sat down and laid off her hat; however, the proposed "talk" did not seem to be ready, and she let Mr. Shubrick wait.
"I wanted to ask you something," said she at last. "I have been wanting to ask you something for a good while."
There she stopped. She was not looking at him; she was taking care not to look at him; she was trying to regard Mr. Shubrick as a foreign abstraction. Seeing which, he began to look at her more persistently than hitherto.
"What is it?" he asked, with not a little curiosity.
"There is nobody else I can ask," Dolly went on; "and if you could give me the help I want, it would be a great thing for me."
"I will if I can."
The young man's eyes did not turn away now. And Dolly was an excessively pretty thing to look at; so taken up with her own thoughts that she was in no danger of finding out that she was an object of attention or perhaps admiration. Her companion perceived this, and indulged his eyes fearlessly. Dolly's fair, flushed face was thin with the work and the care of many weeks past; the traces of that were plain enough; yet it was delicately fair all the same, and perhaps more than ever, with the heightened spirituality of the expression. The writing on her features, of love and purity, habitual self-devotion and self-forgetfulness, patience and sweetness, was so plain and so unconscious, that it made her a very rare subject of contemplation, and, as her companion thought, extremely lovely. Her attitude spoke the same unconsciousness; her dress was of the simplest description; her brown hair was tossed into disorder; but dress and hair and attitude alike were deliciously graceful, with that mingling of characteristics of child and woman which was peculiar to Dolly. Lieutenant Shubrick was familiar with a very diverse type of womanly charms in the shape of his long-betrothed Miss Thayer. The comparison, or contrast, might be interesting; at any rate, any one who had eyes to read this type before him needed no contrast to make it delightful; and probably Mr. Shubrick had such eyes. He was quite silent, leaving Dolly to choose her time and her words at her own pleasure.
"I know you will," she said slowly, taking up his last words;—"you have already; but I am a bad learner. You know what you said, Mr. Shubrick, the day you came, that evening when we were at supper,—about trusting, and not taking care?"