“You’re missin’ it! We been in all day.”
Harrowing announcement!
Nor you nor Hen needs invitation by word of mouth. You are ripping feverishly at your obstinate buttons, and tugging feverishly at your pestering clinging garments. But how absurdly simple was your attire, as reviewed to-day from your environment of starch and balbriggan, hosiery and collar. Nevertheless, many a time, in your agony of haste, you envied Snoopie, who with a single movement slipped the one suspender of his overalls and ducked out of his voluminous shirt, and with a whoop was in!—happy Snoopie!
Now, investing apparel cast aside in an ignominious heap, at last free and untrammeled you stride forward. From knee down and from neck up you are dark-brown; between, you are whitish-brown. Before the season closes you will be an even brown all over (like Snoopie), if your ambition is realized.
First you must wet your head. This is the law; else you may get cramps. You hurriedly wet it.
“Look out!” you warn with a significant step or two backward, to gain momentum.
You give a little run, and with a rapturous shout and a grand splash you are in. So is Hen.
Oh, bliss! The caressing, rollicking flood envelops you to the shoulders. You wade, you kick, you sputter, you blow, you plunge your length, you squeal your joy intense—you convince yourself and would convince others that you swim; and your comrades wade, and kick, and sputter, and blow, and plunge their lengths, and squeal—and ostentatiously paddle. While Snoopie, crawling about under water, grabs legs; presently grabbing yours, and down you go, beneath, to emerge strangling, clutching, incensed.
Stirred from the very bottom, all the pool is beaten to foam, the sun looks down between the spangling leaves and smiles, and the trees fondly overhang, stretching down friendly boughs.