"I've GOT to play I'm a porpoise. I've simply GOT to. Come on, Wheedles, nothing else will work off my pent-up excitement," cried Polly, diving off the float to tumble and turn over and over in the water very like the fish she named, for Polly's training with Captain Pennell during the winter had made her almost as much at home in the water as on land and Peggy swam equally well.
While the young people were splashing about Mrs. Harold and Mrs. Howland came out on the piazza to enjoy the sight.
For half an hour the five splashed, dove, and gamboled as carefree as five young seals, and with as much freedom, then all hurried into the bathhouses where Mammy and Jerome had already anticipated their needs by hurrying down with a supply of necessary wearing apparel; a trifling matter quite overlooked by the bathers themselves.
A gayer, heartier, more glowing group of young people than those gathered at the breakfast table could not have been found in New London or anywhere else; certainly not at the Griswold where the majority of them were either satiated society girls whose winters had been spent in a mad social whirl, or the blase city youths who at nineteen had already found life "such a beastly bore."
"Gad," cried Neil Stewart, slapping Shortie's broad shoulders, "but it's refreshing to find fellows of your age who can still show up such a glow in their cheeks, and such a light in their eyes, and an enthusiasm so infectious that it sets a-tingle every drop of blood in an old kerfoozalem like me. Hang fast to it like grim death, for you'll never get it back if you once lose it. That old school down there turns out chaps who can get more out of the simple life than any bunch I know of. It may be the simple life in some respects, but it's got a confounded lot of hard work in it all the same, and when you've finished that you're ready to take your fun, and you take it just as hard as you take your work, and I don't want to see a better bunch of men than that system shows. I was over at the hotel last night, talking with four or five chaps, younger than you fellows here, and I swear it made me sick: Bored to extinction doing nothing. I'd like to take 'em on board for just about one month and if they didn't find something doing in a watch or two I'd know why. Keep right on having your fun, you and the girls— yes, GIRLS, not a lot of kids playing at being nerve-racked society women."
"Hear! Hear!" cried Glenn Harold. "What's stirred you up, old man?"
"That bunch over yonder. Keep a little girl as long as you can Peggy, and you, Polly, hold your present course. Who ever charted it for you knew navigation all right."
"I guess mother began it and then turned the job over to Aunt Janet, sir," answered Polly.
"Well, she knew her business all right. I'm mighty sorry she can't be here today to see the race, but when she comes back from Northampton she'll bring that other girl I'm so anxious to know too. By George, the Rowland crowd puts up a good showing, and they seem to know how to choose their messmates too, if I can judge by Hunter."
"Isn't he the dearest brother a girl ever had?" asked Polly enthusiastically, for her love for her brother-in-law was a subject of pleasurable comment to all who knew her.