Tony was too excited to sleep just yet—such a great deal had happened in the last two days. In all his ten years he had never felt as he felt now—and yet, from an outsider’s point of view, what a little thing it was!
The day before he had gone to the swimming bath, intending just to watch. It was empty, save for Sergeant and the two boys who went with him every morning. The water looked so clear, and there seemed so much room in the big bath, that Tony undressed and went in.
He paddled shyly about in the shallow end, admiring the two boys, who dived off the spring-board and the pulpit and swam under water, while Sergeant roared directions at them, and flung them head over heels in the deep end, in a fashion that filled Tony with surprise.
The big boy was practising side-stroke, when the little one, whom Sergeant, for some reason or other, called the “swashbuckler,” swam down the bath toward Tony, remarking cheerfully:
“You’ll get rheumatism if you paddle so. Shall I show you the first exercise?”
He was such a little boy, but he swam like a frog. His square, freckled face was so friendly that Tony forgot that he himself was an “oik,” and therefore his sworn foe, and said, “Please, sir!” in the meekest of tiny whispers.
“You must kneel on the edge further down, and let me chuck you in,” was the next command—and Sergeant stopped in the very middle of a shout to chuckle and whisper:
“Blest if the swashbuckler isn’t giving a swimming lesson on his own account!”
And now Tony sat on the edge of his bed and remembered two wonderful mornings, and pondered what it could be that made that friendly little boy so different from all the other boys he knew. And through all his thinking, like the refrain of a song, sounded a sentence he had once heard at Sunday school. He could not remember the whole of it; but five words seemed to batter at his brain as though demanding instant comprehension and attention—“The temple of your body.”
Tony nodded as though in answer to a spoken word. He pictured Sergeant cleaving the water with his long arms, the muscles standing out on his white shoulders.