"May we go in every day, Mother?"
"Every suitable day."
"I'll bet on Ethel Blue," pronounced Roger solemnly. "She's a landsman's daughter so she'll work harder to learn than Ethel Brown will. Ethel Brown will think she'll take to it like a duck because her father is a duck, so to speak."
"You just wait," cried Ethel Brown defiantly.
"I believe they'll both be swimming in ten days," declared Grandfather Emerson.
At least they tried hard. They went regularly to the bathing beach, listened attentively to their instructor's directions, practiced carefully in the water, and were caught by the family a dozen times a day taking turns lying on benches and working each other's legs, and making gestures expressive of their desire to imitate the fishes that they could see slipping through the water when they looked down into it from the dock.
"They just flip a fin and off they go," sighed Ethel Blue. "I flip two fins and wag my feet into the bargain and I go down instead of forward."
"I'm not scared any longer, anyway. Teacher says that's a big gain."
"'Keep air in your lungs and you needn't be afraid,' she's told me over and over. 'Poke your nose out of water and you're all right.' It was kind of goo-ey at first, though, wasn't it, ducking your head and opening your eyes?"
"I got used to that pretty quick because I knew the water wasn't up to my neck and all I had to do to be all right was to stand up. The three arm movements I learned quickly; make ready, put your palms right together in front of your chest—then—"