Mr Sudberry shouted, “Capital! huzza!” clapped his hands, and rushed into the house to prepare, scattering the fowls like chaff in a whirlwind. Fired by his example, the rest of the family followed.
“But we must have our bathe first, papa,” cried Lucy.
“Certainly, my love, there will be time for that.” So away flew Lucy to the nursery, whence she re-issued with Jacky, Tilly, Mrs Brown, and towels.
The bathing-pool was what George called a “great institution.” In using this slang expression George was literally correct, for the bathing-pool was not a natural feature of the scenery: it was artificial, and had been instituted a week after the arrival of the family. The loch was a little too far from the house to be a convenient place of resort for ablutionary purposes. Close beside the house ran a small burn. Its birthplace was one of those dark glens or “corries” situated high up among those mountains that formed a grand towering background in all Fred’s sketches of the White House. Its bed was rugged and broken—a deep cutting, which the water had made on the hill-side. Here was quite a forest of dwarf-trees and shrubs; but so small were they, and so deep the torrent’s bed, that you could barely see the tree-tops as you approached the spot over the bare hills. In dry weather this burn tinkled over a chaos of rocks, forming myriads of miniature cascades and hosts of limpid little pools. During heavy rains it ran roaring riotously over its rough bed with a force that swept to destruction whatever chanced to come in its way.
In this burn, screened from observation by an umbrageous coppice, was the bathing-pool. No pool in the stream was deep enough, in ordinary weather, to take Jacky above the knees; but one pool had been found, about two hundred yards from the house, which was large enough, if it had only been deeper. To deepen it, therefore, they went—every member of the family.
Let us recall the picture:—
Father, in shirt sleeves rolled up to the shoulders, and trousers rolled up to the knees, in the middle of the pool, trying to upheave from the bottom a rock larger than himself—if he only knew it! But he doesn’t, because it is deeply embedded, therefore he toils on in hope. George building, with turf and stone, a strong embankment with a narrow outlet, to allow the surplus water to escape. Fred, Lucy, Tilly, and Peter cutting turf and carrying stones. Mother superintending the whole, and making remarks. Jacky making himself universally disagreeable, and distracting his mother in a miscellaneous sort of way.
“It’s as good as Robinson Crusoe any day!” cries father, panting and wiping his bald forehead. “What a stone! I can’t budge it.” He stoops again, to conquer, if possible; but the great difficulty with father is, that the water comes so near to his tucked-up trousers that he cannot put forth his full strength without wetting them; and mother insists that this must not be done. “Come, George and Fred, bring the pick-axe and the iron lever, we must have this fellow out, he’s right in the middle of the pool. Now, then, heave!”
The lads obey, and father straddles so fiercely that one leg slips down.
“Hah! there, you’ve done it now!” from mother.