There was, unfortunately, one spot very deep down in the lane where the ground was never dry even in the height of the hottest summer.
A little stream ran here across the path, and the ground on either side was soft and sodden. Mrs. Le Page, struggling to avoid an overhanging branch, stepped into the mud; one foot stuck there, and it needed Mr. Cole's strong arm to pull her out of it.
“Charlotte! Charlotte!” she cried. “Don't let Charlotte step into that! Mr. Cole! Mr. Cole! I charge you--my child!” Charlotte was conveyed across, but the damage was done. One of Mrs. Le Page's beautiful shoes was thick with mud.
When, therefore, the party, climbing out of the Lane, came suddenly upon the path leading down to the Cove, with the sea, like a blue cloud in front of them, no one exclaimed at the view. It was a very beautiful view--one of the finest of its kind in the United Kingdom, the high rocks closing in the Cove and the green hills closing in the rocks. On the hill to the right was the Rafiel Old Church, with its graveyard that ran to the very edge of the cliff, and behind the Cove was a stream and a green orchard and a little wood. The sand of the Cove was bright gold, and the low rocks to either side of it were a dark red--the handsomest place in the world, with the water so clear that you could see down, far down, into green caverns laced with silver sand. Unfortunately, at the moment when the Coles and their friends beheld it, it was blazing in the sun; soon the sun would pass and, during the whole afternoon, half of it at least would lie in shadow, but the Le Pages could not be expected to think of that.
The basket was unloaded from the jingle and carried down to the beach by Mr. Cole and Jim. Jeremy, finding himself at the side of the lovely Charlotte, was convulsed with shyness, the more that he knew that the unhappy Mary was listening with jealous ears. Charlotte, walking like Agag, “delicately,” had a piteous expression in her eyes as though she were being led to the torture.
Jeremy coughed and began: “We always come here every year. Don't you like it?”
“And we paddle and bathe. Do you like bathing?”
“Oh, no! Mother says I mustn't, because it'll hurt my hair. Do you like my hair?”