If Biscuit had worked hard, so had his mother. She had taken a peculiar interest in demonstrating the truth of her oft-repeated assertion that one may learn to swim before going into the water.
She replaced without complaint the oilcloth on the kitchen table which had gone to pieces under Biscuit's efforts to master the scissors-kick. She sewed on in silence the numerous buttons that came off. She darned without comment the knees of many stockings that gave way before the edge of the table. And she paid with unaccustomed cheerfulness the cost of each lesson as it arrived. Whether Biscuit or his mother was prouder of the diploma when it came, would have been hard to tell.
The swimming lessons remained a dead secret until the course was completed and the diploma actually in the hands of the graduate. On one or two occasions Biscuit had been unable to suppress the intelligence that he knew something he wasn't going to tell, but as nobody had pressed him for particulars, the news came as a distinct surprise. And it was divulged on the same day that the diploma was received.
When the usual swim was proposed, instead of starting dolefully for home as had been his wont, Biscuit slapped the proponent on the back and cried:
"All right! I'm with you!"
"Huh?" asked Sube with a blank stare.
"Uh-huh, me! Why not?"
"Your mother gone away?"
"No, course she ain't!"
"Maybe you've learned to swim on dry land!" taunted Sube.