As Doctor Jolly said, with his usual strident hearty laugh that could be heard half a mile off, and which was so contagious that it made people smile whose thoughts were the reverse of gay, Teddy was always in hot water, “except, by Jove, when he plunged into the cold, ho, ho!”
With reference to this latter point, however, it may be mentioned here, that albeit he had twice been mercifully preserved from drowning, the vicar, while trustful enough in the divine workings of Providence, did not think it altogether right to allow Teddy’s insurance against a watery grave to be entirely dependent on chance; and so, that very evening, when Jupp came up to the house after he had done his work at the station, he broached the subject to him as soon as the worthy porter had been made cognisant of all the facts connected with the raft adventure.
“No,” said the vicar, so carried away by his feelings that he almost added “my brethren,” fancying himself in the pulpit delivering a homily to his congregation generally, instead of only addressing one hearer, “we ought not to neglect any wise precaution in guarding against those dangers that beset our everyday lives. Lightly spoken as the adage is, that ‘God helps those who help themselves,’ it is true enough.”
“Aye, aye, sir, and so say I,” assented Jupp, rather mystified as to “what the parson was a-driving at,” as he mentally expressed it, by this grand beginning, and thinking it had some reference to his not being present at the pond to rescue Teddy in his peril, which he keenly regretted.
“This being my impression,” continued the vicar, completing his period, as if rounding a sentence in one of his sermons, wherein he was frequently prone to digress, “and I’m glad to learn from your acquiescent reply that you agree with me on the main issue, eh?”
Jupp nodded his head again, although now altogether in a fog regarding the other’s meaning.
“Well, then,” said the vicar, satisfied with having at last cleared the ground for stating his proposition, “I want you to devote any leisure time you may have in the course of the next few weeks to teaching my son to swim; so that, in the event of his unhappily falling into the water again, when neither you nor I may be near, he may be able to save himself—under providence, that is.”
“I was just about a-thinking on the same thing, sir, when you began a-speaking,” observed Jupp thoughtfully, scratching his head in his reflective way as he stood before the vicar cap in hand at the door of the study, where the conference was being held. “I fancied you didn’t like me taking him down to the river, or I’d have taught him to swim long ago, I would, sir!”
“Then I may depend on your doing so now, eh?”
“Sartenly, sir! I’ll be proud, that I will, to show him,” answered Jupp eagerly, mightily pleased with the task intrusted to him, having long wished to undertake it; and so, he being willing, and his pupil nothing loth, Teddy was in a comparatively short space so well instructed how to support himself in the water that he was quite capable of swimming across the river without fear of being sucked down into the mill-race—although he made both his father and Jupp a promise, which he honourably kept, of never bathing there unless accompanied by either of the two.