"What do I care how much you fools laugh?" he sneered, when once more he could make himself heard.
At this his tormenters began to roll about on the grass apparently quite helpless, and Biscuit, thoroughly disgusted, started for home.
"Hey, Biscuit!" Sube called after him teasingly. "Don't go home mad! Come on down 'in'; and we'll teach you how to swim on the way down!"
But Biscuit did not so much as glance back.
"Learnin' to swim 'fore he could go in the water!" howled Gizzard derisively.
"That'd be like learnin' to eat without grub," suggested Sube as the party moved off in the direction of the swimming-hole.
When Biscuit walked into the house a few minutes afterwards, he came upon his mother in conversation with a tall young man, who, had he lived up to his teeth, would have been prominent.
"Yes, madam," the caller was saying, "we have added a number of new courses to our curriculum and are now in a position to offer to the world, I might say, universal knowledge. We now cover, I might say, the entire field of human endeavor.
"Take for example the ordinary day of life. It begins the instant one is out of bed in the morning. First, take our morning exercises. They come in our excellent course in Physical Culture and Muscle-building, with full directions how to increase your weight a pound a day"—he glanced at Mrs. Westfall and observing her ample figure, added—"also, I might say, how to reduce your weight to any desired figure.
"Next in order would come our course in The Bath; How to Give or Take One. After that would come our fashionable course, Dress; What to Wear and When. Follow this with our complete course in Domestic Science and Home Economy, which, I might say, contains a menu for three meals a day for three hundred and sixty-five days, or a full year. When the breakfast is prepared and on the table, our course in Etiquette and Table Manners, the Science of Good Form. This teaches one what to do when at the table; how to eat rare and unusual food; which fork to use; disposing of the discard; what to say, and many other difficult questions that are wont to arise at the table.