On Saturday afternoons most of Crosby Corners, men, women, and children, comes to Sandy Bottom, bringing bathing-suits. It is not a very big pool; at its deepest part it is not much over six feet deep.
How it happened that the small man with the velvet trousers should be passing Sandy Bottom that Saturday noon at the precise moment when freckled Johnny Nelson was floundering in the water and calling loudly for help does not matter. Why Johnny Nelson should be drowning at all is something of a puzzle, for he was the best swimmer in the county. It also happened that just as Johnny was going down for the ninth or tenth time and was calling piteously for Velvet Pants to dive in and save him, Janey Crosby and a party of girl friends came down to the pool.
They saw Velvet Pants, his dark face ivory colored, trying to reach Johnny with a young tree wrenched from the bank. The small man was a picture of frantic helplessness.
“Save me, Velvet Pants! Save me!” bawled Johnny, submerging, and coming up for the fourteenth time.
“Not know how,” screamed Velvet Pants in agony. “Not know how.”
Janey Crosby and her companions grew mildly hysterical; Johnny Nelson went down for the seventeenth and eighteenth time, respectively. Velvet Pants, finding that he could not reach Johnny with the tree, had fallen on his knees, and with clasped hands was praying aloud in his own tongue. Then, it also happened, that Pete High came racing through the bushes.
“I’ll save you, Johnny,” he cried dramatically. Overalls and all, he plunged in and brought the dripping Johnny to the bank. The prayers of Velvet Pants became prayers of thanksgiving. Pete High stood regarding him with disgust.
“Oh, Velvet Pants,” said Janey Crosby, “why didn’t you jump in and save him?”
Slowly, sadly the small man shrugged his shoulders.
“Not know water,” he said; “not know sweem.”