Tish approached the swimming matter in her usual convincing way.
“Man,” she said, “has conquered all the elements—earth, air and water. He walks. He flies. He swims—or should. The normal human being to-day should be as much at home in water as in the air, and vice versa, to follow the great purpose.”
“If that’s the great purpose we would have both wings and fins,” said Aggie rather truculently, for she saw what was coming. But Tish ignored her.
“Water,” she went on, “is sustaining. Hence boats. It is as easy to float the human body as a ship.”
“Is it?” Aggie demanded. “I didn’t float so you could notice it the night you backed the car into the lake.”
“You didn’t try,” Tish said sternly. “You opened your mouth to yell, and that was the equivalent of a leak in a ship. I didn’t say a leaking boat would float, did I?”
We thought that might end it, but it did not. When we went upstairs to bed we heard her filling the tub, and shortly after that she called us into the bathroom. She was lying extended in the tub, with a Turkish towel covering her, and she showed us how, by holding her breath, she simply had to stay on top of the water.
“I advise you both,” she said, “to make this experiment to-night. It will give you confidence to-morrow.”
We went out and closed the door, and Aggie clutched me by the arm.
“I’ll die first, Lizzie,” she said. “I don’t intend to learn to swim, and I won’t. A fortune teller told me to beware of water, and that lake’s full of tin cans.”