“And what did you do when the dark came on?” asked the Rector.
“I reversed myself and began swimming. After a while I got awful chilly; so I went to the bank and went through all sorts of Delsarte movements to get warm. This took me from fifteen minutes to half an hour. Then I went in again and swam and floated till I felt I was freezing. I took to the shore again, and ran and jumped as long as I could, and that’s the way it went on the whole night. It was the longest night ever. Every minute got me hungrier and chillier. I didn’t notice the hunger so much; but it seems to me that I’d never, never be warm again. Oh, wasn’t I glad when the dawn came, and didn’t I pray for a hot sun. When the sun did rise, I saw that I was getting near a big town, and I looked about for some place to land. Somehow, I couldn’t quite make up my mind.”
“Why not?” asked the Rector.
“I didn’t like the way I was dressed. Bathing suits are all right for the water, but for company—I may be all sorts of an idiot, but I’m not as nervy as the average summer girl. No decent boy is.”
“Oh, Lord!” gasped the Rector.
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Go on, my boy.”
“Well, I got past the city which, I saw on a sign at a boat landing, was Prairie du Chien, and—no, not quite past. A little after swimming under the bridge, I saw a building—a great big building that looked like a college. It was just beyond the railroad tracks, and it had a beautiful grove of trees just below the building itself. Right on the shore was a lot of weeds that had been cut and been lying there long enough to dry. There was nobody in sight, and so I slipped ashore and covered myself up in the weeds, and tried to get warm. I was there a long time; and it was a long time before I began to get anyways warm. Oh, it was delicious that feeling of warmth coming back slowly but surely. Really, I’d have gone to sleep, only something else began to go wrong.”
“Did the jiggers get you?” asked the Brother.
“No; it wasn’t ants or jiggers or bugs of any kind. It was my little ‘tummy.’ The warmer I got, the hungrier I got. If I had a thousand dollars then, I’d have handed it over gladly for a hunk of bread. After a while, I forgot I had ever been cold, but I was famishing. So I threw off the weeds, put on my bathing suit, and started for that building. I was afraid of my life of being seen by women-folks, so I crawled and walked and crawled. It was slow work. Well, anyhow, I got to the fence leading into those grounds and was just climbing over when down from the building came running and dancing a whole raft of little girls!”