The day arrived, and it was marvellously fine—one of those days in August when heat possesses the world and holds it tranced and still, but has in the very strength of its possession some scent of the decay and chill of autumn that is to follow so close upon its heels. There was no breeze, no wind from the sea, only a sky utterly without cloud and a world without sound.

Punctually at eleven of the morning the splendid Le Page equipage arrived at Cow Farm. Splendid it was! A large wagonette, with a stout supercilious fellow on the box who sniffed at the healthy odours of the farm and stared haughtily at Mrs. Monk as though she should be ashamed to be alive. The Coles had provided a small plump “jingle” with a small plump pony, their regular conveyance; the pony was Bob, and he would not go up hills unless persuaded with sugar, but Jeremy loved him and would not have ridden behind any other steed in the whole world. How contemptuously the big black horses of the wagonette gazed down their nostrils at Bob, and how superbly Mrs. Le Page, sitting very upright under her white sunshade, greeted Mrs. Cole!

“Dear Mrs. Cole. Such a hot morning, isn't it? Lovely, of course, but so hot.”

“I'm afraid,” Jeremy heard his mother say, “that your carriage will never get down the Rafiel Lane, Mrs. Le Page. We hoped you'd come in the dog-cart. Plenty of room...”

Superb to witness the fashion in which Mrs. Le Page gazed at the dog-cart.

“For all of us?... Dear Mrs. Cole, I scarcely think—And Charlotte's frock...”

Then Jeremy turned his eyes to Charlotte. She sat under a miniature sunshade of white silk and lace, a vision of loveliness. She was a shimmer of white, a little white cloud that had settled for a moment upon the seat of the carriage to allow the sun to dance upon it, to caress it with fingers of fire, so to separate it from the rest of the world for ever as something too precious to be touched. Jeremy had never seen anything so lovely.

He blushed and scraped his boots the one against the other.

“And this is Jeremy?” said Mrs. Le Page as though she said: “And this is where you keep your little pigs, Mr. Monk?”

“Yes,” said Jeremy, blushing.

“Charlotte, you know Jeremy. You must be friends.”

“Yes,” said Charlotte, without moving. Then Jeremy tumbled into the stern gaze of Mr. Le Page who, arrayed as he was in a very smart suit of the whitest flannels, looked with his black beard and fierce black eyebrows like a pirate king disguised.

“How are you?” said Mr. Le Page in a deep bass voice.

“Very well, thank you,” said Jeremy.

To tell the truth, Mrs. Cole's heart sadly misgave her when she saw the Le Page family all sitting up so new and so bright in their new and bright carriage. She thought of the simple preparations that had been made—the pasties, the saffron buns and the ginger beer; she looked around her at the very plain but useful garments worn by her family, her husband in faded grey flannel trousers and a cricketing shirt, Helen and Mary in the simplest blue cotton, and Jeremy in his two-year-old sailor suit. She had intended to bring their bathing things in a bundle, but now she put them aside. It was obvious that the Le Pages had no intention of bathing. She sighed and foresaw a difficult day ahead of her.

It was evident that the Le Pages did not intend to come one step farther into Cow Farm than was necessary.

“Dear Mrs. Cole, on a hot day—how can you endure the smells of a farm... such a charming farm, too, with all its cows and pigs, but in this weather... Charlotte darling, you don't feel the heat? No? Hold your sun-shade a little more to the right, love. That's right. She was not quite the thing last night, Mrs. Cole. I had some doubts about bringing her, but I knew you'd all be so disappointed. She's looking rather lovely to-day, don't you think? You must forgive a mother's partiality... Oh, you're not bringing that little dog, are you? Surely—”

Jeremy, who had from the first hated Mrs. Le Page, forgot his shyness and brought out fiercely:

“Of course he's coming. Hamlet always goes everywhere with us.”

“Hamlet!” said Mr. Le Page in his deep bass voice.

“What a strange name for a dog!” said Mrs. Le Page in tones of vague distrust.

At last it was settled that one member of the Cole party should ride with the Le Pages, and Mary was selected. Poor Mary! inevitably chosen when something unpleasant must be done. To-day it was especially hard for her, because she entertained so implacable a hatred for the lovely Charlotte and looked, it must be confessed, so plain and shabby by the side of her. Indeed, to any observer with a heart it must have been touching to see Mary driven away in that magnificent black carriage, staring with agonised hostility in front of her through her large spectacles, compelled to balance herself exactly between the magnificent sunshade of Mrs. Le Page and the smaller but also magnificent sunshade of the lovely Charlotte. Mrs. Cole, glancing in that direction, may have felt with a pang that she would never be able to make her children handsome and gay as she would like to do—but it was certainly a pang of only a moment's duration.

She would not have exchanged her Mary for a wagon-load of Charlottes.

And Jeremy, bumping along in the jingle, also felt the contrast. Why could not Mary wear her straw hat straight, and why must she have elastic under her chin? Why did she look so cross and so stupid? Why did she bother him so with her worries? Charlotte would never worry him. She would just sit there, looking beautiful, with her golden hair, and blue eyes and pink cheeks. Next week was to be Miss Jones's birthday, and in preparation for this he had bought for her in Polchester a silver thimble. He wondered whether he would not give Charlotte this thimble instead of Miss Jones. He could give Miss Jones some old thing he would find somewhere, or he would go out and pick for her some flowers. She would be pleased with anything. He wondered what Charlotte would say when he gave her the thimble. She would like it, of course. She would smile. She would open her eyes and look at him. Fortunately he had the thimble even now in his pocket. He had bought it when he was wearing this same suit. Yes, he would give it to her. As he decided this he looked at Miss Jones guiltily, but she was making such odd faces as she squinted to escape from the sun that he did not feel ashamed.

They came to that steep hill just beyond Garth woods, and Bob, of course, refused to move. The superb Le Page affair dashed past them, shouted something at them, and disappeared over the brow of the hill. The last thing to be seen of them were the fierce despairing eyes of the imprisoned Mary. A strange sensation of relief instantly settled upon the Coles. For a moment they were alone; they began slowly to walk up the hill, dragging with them the reluctant Bob. About them was peace, absolute and unstained. The hard glitter of the day shone upon the white road, but behind them the wood was dark and cool, a green cloud against the sky. Behind the steep hedges the harvesters were moving. In the air a lark was singing, and along the ditch at the road side a tiny stream tumbled. And beyond these sounds there was a vast tranquil silence.

The Coles moved up the hill very slowly, only Hamlet racing ahead to find spots of shadow where he might lie down and pant. They would not confess to themselves that this promised to be the happiest moment of their day. They went bravely forward.

On the bend of the hill the Le Pages were waiting for them. What Mrs. Cole had foreseen had in truth occurred. The Le Page carriage would not go down the Rafiel Lane. No, it would, not... Nothing would induce it to.

“James,” said Mrs. Le Page to her stout and disdainful attendant.

“Nothing, ma'am,” said James.

“Dear me, dear me,” said Mrs. Le Page. “Well then, we must walk,” said the deep despairing voice of the Pirate King.

And walk they did.

That walk was, as Mrs. Cole afterwards said, “a pity,” because it destroyed the Le Page tempers when the day was scarcely begun. Mr. Le Page was, it was quickly descried, not intended for walking. Strong and fierce though he seemed, heat instantly crumpled him up. The perfect crease of his white trousers vanished, his collar was no longer spotless, little beads of perspiration appeared almost at once on his forehead, and his black beard dripped moisture. Mrs. Le Page, with her skirts raised, walked as though she were passing through the Valley of Destruction; every step was a risk and a danger, and the difficulty of holding her skirts and her sunshade at the same time, and of seeing that her shoes were not soiled and her hat not caught by an offending bough gave her face an expression of desperate despair.

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?”

“Yes,” she said miserably.

“And we paddle and bathe. Do you like bathing?”

“Going into the sea?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, no! Mother says I mustn't, because it'll hurt my hair. Do you like my hair?”

“Yes,” said Jeremy, blushing at so direct an invitation to compliment.

“Mother says I've got to be very careful of my hair because it's my chief beauty.”

“Yes,” said Jeremy.

“I have a maid, Alice, and she brushes a whole hour every morning and a whole hour every evening.”

“Don't you get very tired?” asked Jeremy. “I know I should.”

“Mother says if you have such beautiful hair you must take trouble with it,” Charlotte gravely replied.

Her voice was so like the voice of a parrot that Jeremy's grandmother had once possessed that it didn't seem as though a human being was speaking at all. They were near the beach now and could see the blue slipping in, turning into white bubbles, then slipping out again.

“Do you like my frock?” said Charlotte.

“Yes,” said Jeremy.

“It was bought in London. All my clothes are bought in London.”

“Mary's and Helen's aren't,” said Jeremy with some faint idea of protecting his sisters. “They're bought in Polchester.”

“Mother says,” said Charlotte, “that if you're not pretty it doesn't matter where you buy your clothes.”

They arrived on the beach and stared about them. It became at once a great question as to where Mrs. Le Page would sit. She could not sit on the sand which looked damp, nor equally, of course, on a rock that was spiky and hard. What to do with her? She stood in the middle of the beach, still holding up her skirts, gazing desperately about her, looking first at one spot and then at another.

“Oh, dear, the heat!” she exclaimed. “Is there no shade anywhere? Perhaps in that farm-house over there...” It was probable enough that no member of the Cole family would have minded banishing Mrs. Le Page into the farmhouse, but it would have meant that the whole party must accompany her. That was impossible. They had come for a picnic and a picnic they would have.

Mrs. Cole watched, with growing agitation, the whole situation. She saw from her husband's face that he was rapidly losing his temper, and she had learnt, after many experiences, that when he lost his temper he was capable of anything. That does not mean, of course, that he ever was angry to the extent of swearing or striking out with his fists—no, he simply grew sadder, and sadder, and sadder, and this melancholy had a way of reducing to despair all the people with whom he happened to be at the time.

“What does everyone say to our having lunch now?” cried Mrs. Cole cheerfully. “It's after one, and I'm sure everyone's hungry.”

No one said anything, so preparations were begun. A minute piece of shade was found for Mrs. Le Page, and here she sat on a flat piece of rock with her skirts drawn close about her as though she were afraid of rats or crabs. A tablecloth was laid on the sand and the provisions spread out—pasties for everybody, egg-sandwiches, seed-cake, and jam-puffs—and ginger beer. It looked a fine feast when it was all there, and Mrs. Cole, as she gave the final touch to it by placing a drinking glass containing two red rose-buds in the middle, felt proud of her efforts and hoped that after all the affair might pass off bravely. But alas, how easily the proudest plans fall to the ground.

“I hope, Alice, you haven't forgotten the salt!”

Instantly Mrs. Cole knew that she had forgotten it. She could see herself standing there in Mrs. Monk's kitchen forgetting it. How could she? And Mrs. Monk, how could SHE? It had never been forgotten before.

“Oh, no,” she said wildly. “Oh, no! I'm sure I can't have forgotten it.”

She plunged about, her red face all creased with anxiety, her hat on one side, her hands searching everywhere, under the tablecloth, in the basket, amongst the knives and forks.

“Jim, you haven't dropped anything?”

“No, mum. Beggin' your pardon, mum, the basket was closed, so to speak—closed it was.”

No, she knew that she had forgotten it.

“I'm so sorry, Mrs. Le Page, I'm afraid—”

“My dear Mrs. Cole! What does it matter? Not in the least, I assure you. In this heat it's impossible to feel hungry, isn't it? I assure you I don't feel as though I could touch a thing. A little fruit, perhaps—an apple or a peach—”

Fruit? Why hadn't Mrs. Cole brought fruit? She might so easily have done so, and she had never thought about it. They themselves were rather tired of fruit, and so—

“I'm afraid we've no fruit, but an egg-sandwich—”

“Eggs need salt, don't you think? Not that it matters in the very least, but so that you shouldn't think me fussy. Really, dear Mrs. Cole, I never felt less hungry in my life. Just a drop of milk and I'm perfectly satisfied.”

“Jeremy shall run up to the farm for the milk. You don't mind, Jeremy dear, do you? It's only a step. Just take this sixpence, dear, and say we'll send the jug back this afternoon if they'll spare one.”

Jeremy did mind. He was enjoying his luncheon, and he was gazing at Charlotte, and he was teasing Hamlet with scraps—he was very happy. Nevertheless, he started off.

So soon as he left the sands the noise of the sea was shut off from him, and he was climbing the little green path up which the Scarlet Admiral had once stalked.

Suddenly he remembered—in his excitement about Charlotte he had forgotten the Admiral. He stood for a moment, listening. The green hedge shut off the noise of the sea—only above his head some birds were twittering. He fancied that he heard footsteps, then that beyond the hedge something was moving. It seemed to him that the birds were also listening for something. “Well, it's the middle of the afternoon, anyway.” He thought to himself, “He never comes there—only in the morning or evening,” but he hurried forward after that, wishing that he had called to Hamlet to accompany him. It was a pleasant climb to the farm through the green orchard, and he found at the farm door an agreeable woman who smiled at him when she gave him the milk. He had to come down the hill carefully, lest the milk should be spilt. He walked along very happily, humming to himself and thinking in a confused summer afternoon kind of manner of Charlotte, Hamlet, Mrs. Le Page and himself. “Shall I give her the thimble or shan't I? I could take her to the pools where the little crabs are. She'd like them. I wonder whether we're going to bathe. Mrs. Le Page will look funny bathing...” Then he was in the green lane again, and at once his discomfort returned to him, and he looked around his shoulder and into the hedges, and stopped once and again to listen. There was no sound. The birds, it seemed, had all fallen to sleep. The hedges, he thought, were closer about him. It was very hot here, with no breeze and no comforting sound of the sea. “I wonder whether he really does come,” he thought. “It must be horrid to see him—coming quite close.” And the thought of the Fool also frightened him. The Fool with his tongue out and his shaking legs, like the idiot who lived near the Cathedral at home. At the thought of this Jeremy suddenly took to his legs and ran, covering the top of his jug with his hand; then, when he came out on to the strip of grass that crossed the top of the beach, he stopped, suddenly ashamed of himself. Scarlet Admirals! Scarlet Admirals! How could there be Scarlet Admirals in a world that also contained so blazing a sun, so blue a sea, and the gorgeous realities of the Le Page family. He arrived at the luncheon party hot and proud and smiling, so cheerful and stolid and agreeable that even Mrs. Le Page was compelled to say, “Really, Mrs. Cole, that's a very nice little boy of yours. Come here, little Jeremy, and talk to me!” How deeply he hated being called “little Jeremy” only Mary and Helen knew. Their eyes flew to his face to see how he would take it. He took it very well. He sat down beside Mrs. Le Page, who very gracefully and languidly sipped at her glass of milk.

“How old are you, Jeremy dear?” she asked him.

“Eight,” he answered, wriggling.

“What a nice age! And one day you'll go to school?”

“In September.”

“And what will you be when you're a man?”

“Oh, I don't know. I'll be a soldier, perhaps.”

“Oh, I'm sure you wouldn't like to be a soldier and kill people.”

“Yes, I would. There's lots of people I'd like to kill.”

Mrs. Le Page drew her skirts back a little.

“How horrible! I'm sure your mother wouldn't like to hear that.”

But Mr. Cole had caught the last words of the dialogue and interrupted with:

“But what could be finer, Mrs. Le Page, than the defence of one's country? Would you have our young lads grow up faint-hearted and fail their Motherland when she calls? What can be finer, I say, than to die for Queen and country? Would not every mother have her son shed his blood for liberty and freedom?... No, Jeremy, not another. You've had quite enough. It would indeed be a disheartening sight if we elders were to watch our sons and grandchildren turning their swords into ploughshares—”

He was interrupted by a shrill cry from Mrs. Le Page:

“Charlotte, darling, do hold your sunshade up. All the left side of your face is exposed. That's better, dear. I beg your pardon, Mr. Cole.”

But Mr. Cole was offended.

“I hope no son of mine will ever show himself a faint heart,” he concluded severely.

The luncheon, in fact, had been a most dismal failure. The Coles could fling their minds back to luncheons on this same beach that had been simply riotous successes. What fun they had had! What games! What bathes? Now the very sight of Mr. Le Page's black beard was enough. Even Jeremy felt that things were wrong. Then he looked at Charlotte and was satisfied. There she sat, straight and stiff, her hands on her lap, her hair falling in lovely golden ripples down her back, her gaze fixed on distance. Oh! she was beautiful! He would do whatever she told him; he would give her Miss Noah and the apple tree; he would—A sound disturbed his devotions. He turned. Both Mr. and Mrs. Le Page were fast asleep.