“Well, I didn’t wiggle ’em much, anyhow,” grumbles Fat.
With breath tight held and head tilted stanchly back, launching yourself and paddling furiously dog-fashion, you can easily imagine that you are cleaving a path through the murky flood.
“You’re touchin’ bottom! Aw, you touched bottom!” accuses Fat.
“I wasn’t, either, darn you! I started ’way up there at that stick and I come ’way down here!” (The distance is at least a yard.)
Betimes, splashing out, you all seek the banks, amphibious-like; to streak yourselves fantastically with mud, to cover yourselves luxuriously with hot sand, to race, to gambol, or to loll on the turf and emulously compare sunburn, “peels,” and vaccination scars.
In again you scamper, and the pool resumes its cauldron turmoil.
The sun, from his new station low in the west, sends rays slanting in beneath the trees to signal “Home.”
“Come on, I’m goin’ out!” says Hen. “You’d better, too. Your lips are blue as the dickens.”
“So are yours,” you retort. “Ain’t they, kids! Ain’t Hen’s lips bluer’n mine?”
A farewell wallow, and out you wade reluctantly. One by one out wade all. Your hands are shriveled with long soaking. You are water-logged. There is sand in your hair. Languidly you dress.