Was he going to see something?
What was it?
Who was it?
Then the awful catastrophe that finished the afternoon occurred.

Turning the corner of the rock, Charlotte missed her footing and fell straight into a pool.

Jeremy, Mary and Helen were upon her almost as she fell.
They dragged her out, but alas! what a sight was there! Instead of the beautiful and magnificent Charlotte there was a bedraggled and dirty little girl.
But also, instead of an inanimate and lifeless doll, there was at last a human being, a terrified soul.
The scene that followed passes all power of description.

Mrs.Le Page wailed like a lost spirit; Mr.Le Page was so rude to Mr.Cole that it might confidently be said that those two gentlemen would never speak to one another again.

Mrs.Cole, dismayed though she was, had some fatalistic consolation that she had known from the first that the picnic would be a most dreadful failure and that the worst had occurred; there was no more to come.
Everyone was too deeply occupied to scold Jeremy.