One particular afternoon found the namesakes strolling arm in arm along the narrow sandy lane which led inland from the beach towards the woods and the hills behind. It was the most delightful lane, with high grassy banks covered with pink bindweed and tiny blue sheep's scabious, and bright masses of yellow bedstraw, and great clumps of mallows, with seed-vessels on them just like little cheeses, which you could gather and thread on pieces of cotton to make necklaces. There was a hedge at the top of the bank, too, where grew the beautiful twining briony, with its dark leaves and glossy berries; and long trails of bramble, where a few early blackberries could be discovered if you cared to reach for them; and down among the sand at the bottom of the ditch you might find an occasional horned poppy, or the curious flowers and glaucous prickly leaves of the sea holly. Isobel, on the strength of a new bright-green tin vasculum, purchased only that very morning at the toy-shop near the station, and slung over her shoulder in the style of a student in a German picture-book, felt herself to be a full-fledged botanist, and rushed about in a very enthusiastic manner, scrambling up the banks after pink centaury, diving into the hedge bottom for campions, or getting her hair caught, like Absalom, in a prickly rose-bush in a valiant endeavour to secure a particularly fine clump of harebells which were nodding in the breeze on the stones of the old wall.
"They're perfectly lovely, aren't they?" she cried. "I've got fourteen different sorts of flowers already, and I'm sure some of them must be rare--anyway, I've never seen them before. I'm going to press them directly I get home. Do you think this stump will bear me if I climb up for that piece of briony?"
"I'm afraid it won't," said Belle, fastening some of the harebells in her dress (they matched her blue sash and hat ribbons). "It looks fearfully rotten. There! I told you it wouldn't hold," as Isobel descended with a crash. "And you're covered with sand and prickly burrs--such a mess!"
"Never mind," said Isobel, the state of whose clothing rarely distressed her. "They'll brush off. But I must have the briony. I'll climb up by the wall if you'll hold these hips for a moment."