"Bunny," he said carelessly, "you don't mind if we go swimming, do you? There's a big tank in there, with the water so clear you can see the bottom all over."
"Sorry, Jump," the patrol leader decided, "but it wouldn't do. You'd tire yourself out in no time."
"The other fellows are swimming right now," Jump protested.
Bunny clenched his hands. "The Scouts, you mean?"
"No, Kiproy and Collins and Turner and Barrett. Bi said we ought to get your permission before we went in."
"Not now," Bunny told him. "After the game, maybe, but not now." He watched Jump slouch dejectedly away. "I wish," he told himself, "that Sheffield had stayed around and told those others not to go swimming. It won't help their speed any in the basketball game."
But at supper that evening, when they were guests of the Elkana team, the four boys who had been in the tank looked so fresh and fit for battle that Bunny decided no harm had been done. The business of eating a delicious meal, and of getting acquainted with their opponents, and of bandying challenges and promises and good-natured threats back and forth apparently galloped the hands of the clock on the wall; and it seemed no time at all before they were piling upstairs from the gymnasium dressing quarters into a room flooded with brilliant light and banked on all sides by a large and noisy gathering.
Some official tossed a coin for choice of baskets, and Sheffield said "Heads." He laughed when he won.
"I don't see any advantage either way," he told the Elkana captain. "Pick your side, please."