Dick thought for a few seconds and then remarked quietly:
“Well, seems to me I’ve heard that, when you are afraid to do a thing, there’s only one way out, and that is to do it.”
“Isn’t that just what I’m doing?” said Bill, with vehemence. “I plunge in all right, but it’s after I’ve got in that I’m scared if anything different happens!”
There was another pause, and a longer one than the last, and then Dick’s face lit up with a bright smile.
“I have it,” said he; “look, Billy, it’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
“What?” asked Bill incredulously.
“It’s because you don’t feel friendly with the water. Now, don’t say a word until I tell you what I mean. My Dad, he has a story that I’ve heard him tell fifty times, about when he was a young man and was walking along the road for two or three days with two other fellows to a lumber camp in Maine. He says whenever they came to a village, the dogs of course would run out to see who they were; and there was one among them (whom Dad calls Bob) that the dogs would always bark at much worse than they did at Dad and the other fellow. Well, Bob didn’t like getting particular attention from the dogs; and, after a while, he got so cross that he used to put stones in his pocket all ready to throw at them. Dad and the other fellow kept wondering what it was about Bob that made the dogs hate him as if he were a natural enemy; and, finally, they decided it was because Bob was scared of the dogs. Then they began asking him questions about his home and what he used to do when he was a boy, and they found that he never had a dog of his own, and didn’t understand dogs.
“‘I don’t like ’em,’ said he, ‘and I guess I come by it rightly, for Mother she was fond of cats, and never would have a dog about the place.’
“Dad,—he mulled over this, and he got more and more sure and certain that the reason the dogs didn’t like Bob was because he was scared of them. Dogs like folks who are friendly with ’em, says Dad, and when you’re scared you’re only thinking about yourself and your own safety, and so you can’t be friendly.”
“But I don’t understand,” answered Billy. “I can see how you can be friendly with a dog, but how can you be friendly with the sea when it’s liable to drown you?”