CHAPTER IVLEARNING TO SWIM
Thechildren were delighted with the lovely little city of Santa Luzia, which lay upon the coast, snuggling in its arms a placid, sunny bay. For the first week after their arrival Weezy never tired of watching the sails on the water, and of counting how many she could see from her window at “The Old and New.”
“The Old and New” was Mrs. Kitto’s boarding-house, overlooking Santa Luzia Beach. The Old was the back part, built of brown adobe, with walls two feet thick; the New was the modern wooden front, with a breezy veranda stepping down toward the sea.
“The house puts its best foot forward,”prattled Molly, as she and Kirke and Weezy set off one morning for a lesson in swimming.
“That’s all right,” replied Kirke, “if it keeps steady on its pins.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” sniffed Weezy with disapproval. “Houses don’t have feet; and they don’t have pins.”
“No, norsoleseither, you precious snip of a goosie.”
Kirke held his little sister’s hand, swinging it to and fro as they walked together across the beach.
“Are you going to squeal to-day when you go into the water? The last time you scared the swimming-master half out of his wits.”
“O Kirke, what a story!”
“I’ll leave it to Molly if the man didn’t duck.”
“You silly, silly boy! You know he ducked on purpose.”
Weezy flirted her sunny head in high disdain,while Kirke and Molly exchanged amused glances.
“Do you think so, Weezy? Well, may be he did duck on purpose. I mean to try that ducking business myself this morning. Whatever you do, little sister, don’t grab me around the neck; you might pull me under.”
Kirke spoke in jest. He could already swim quite well, for he had learned the art a year or two before in the East. Molly and Weezy, on the contrary, had only taken three lessons.
“Hoh, Kirke! I couldn’t pull you under. Of course not, ’cause you’rebiggerer’nI am,” said Weezy, stopping to watch a small urchin scooping ovens in the sand.
He was a plump little boy in “brownie” overalls, which Molly insisted made him look like a fat, twisted doughnut.
“He looks like Harry Hobbs,” responded Kirke, hurrying Weezy on towards the bath-house.
Molly felt a sudden twinge of conscience.
“That makes me think, Kirke, what shall we do about Harry? If he comes, he’ll have to come next week with the Bradstreets. Mamma has left it to us, you know, to ask him or not, as we please.”
Kirke whistled, and kicked aside a tangle of seaweed.
“Oh! we might as well invite the young Britisher, I suppose.”
“But if Harry comes, Kirke, you and I’ll each have to keep an eye on him to”—
“Yes, that’ll be an eye apiece, Molly.”
“To see that he doesn’t get drowned or anything.”
“Pooh, Miss Fidgetibus, who’s going to drown him? You couldn’t sink that dumpy boy any more’n you could sink the buoy on the rock yonder.”
“I thought you didn’t want Harry any more than I did, Kirke.”
“Who says I do want him? Only I was thinking he could burrow here in all outdoors like a gopher; and it seems sort of mean, doesn’t it, Molly, to shut down on the poor little kid?”
“I—don’t—know.”
Molly’s glance had wandered from the sturdy young oven-builder to a group of well-dressed tourists climbing the long flight of steps to the bluff overhead. How mortifying it would be to take Harry about among people like those, and pose as his sister. WheredidMiss Hobbs get the patterns of his clothes?
“The beach will make Harry weller, mamma says,” observed Weezy, always ready to fill the pauses.
“Better, you mean, don’t you, Weezy?” corrected Molly. “Mamma is always wanting to make somebody better.”
“You’re right, ma’am,” Kirke nodded emphatically.“Mamma is kind, way through. She isn’t much like you and me, Molly. Sometimes we’re kind, and then again sometimes we’rekind of not.”
“Thank you, sir; you can speak for yourself, if you please,” retorted Molly, bridling.
She had secretly prided herself on being unselfish and warm-hearted, and this frank remark was wounding to her self-love.
“For my part, I’m willing to send for Harry,” she added virtuously.
“So am I, Molly,—on a pinch,” said Kirke. “And I suppose Pauline will bring him,—on a pinch!”
“Then, as soon as we get home to The Old and New, Kirke, we’ll ask mamma to write to Miss Hobbs, and have it over with.”
“Agreed. The Bradstreets will be here by next Thursday, won’t they? Will they stay at The Old and New a week?”
“They’ll stay till the captain and HopKee get Camp Hilarious in running order,” answered Molly, as they mounted the steps of the bath-house.
While Kirke presented their tickets at the office, she and Weezy waited in the main room. This had a large oblong bathing-tank in the centre, surrounded on its four sides by a broad walk. The dressing-rooms opened upon this walk, and the door of each one had painted on it near the top either a number or a letter of the alphabet.
“Which room would you like, Molly?” asked Kirke, quickly returning with the keys and their bathing-suits. “You can take ‘H’ or ‘No. 7.’”
“No. 7; it is the larger,” said Molly, drawing Weezy into that room, and locking the door.
Kirke vanished into “H,” to reappear before No. 7 in precisely two minutes, clad in blue flannel, and calling,—
“What! Aren’t you ready yet, girls?”
That was the fun of being a boy, and having no strings and no hooks and eyes to hinder him!
On emerging into the main room the children found their father seated there awaiting them. He had formed the habit of being present at their swimming-lessons.
“I feel safer to watch my ducklings,” Molly heard him say to Mr. Tullis, the swimming-master, as she and Weezy drew near.
“Your daughters are learning fast, especially this little one,” answered Mr. Tullis, looking at Weezy. “She’ll soon swim like a fish.”
Mr. Rowe patted Weezy’s head, shining beneath her oiled-silk cap.
“She’s a venturesome little lassie,” he said. “She never seems to know what fear is.”
“She’ll make all the better swimmer for that, Mr. Rowe.”
“Provided she doesn’t take too great risks, Mr. Tullis. I’ve sometimes feared we ought not to let her go into the water.”
“Anybody’s liable to get into water, Mr. Rowe; the point is to know how to get out,” replied the swimming-master lightly.
Molly and Kirke hardly heeded the remark at the time, but it rang in their ears afterward.
Mr. Tullis was already leading Weezy down the steps into the tank, which was divided across the middle by a low wall of stone. On one side of this wall the water was cold, but on the side they were entering it was agreeably warm; and Weezy was soon paddling about with great glee, supported under the chin by the strong hand of the swimming-master.
“Look, papa, see how well I can do it!” she cried, splashing and puffing like a young seal, till she was out of breath.
“You’d better rest a few minutes now, little girl,” said Mr. Tullis.
And leaving Weezy clinging to a plank, he went to instruct Molly in swimming.
Meantime Kirke had been making ludicrous attempts to mount a hobby-horse, which, being mostly barrel, would rear and plunge as often as he tried to get astride its back. Finally, tired of these fruitless efforts, he climbed the staircase near by to coast down the toboggan slide with some other boys.
Mr. Rowe looked on as his son dashed down the slippery board again and again, and dived into the tank. Then he glanced at his more timid Molly, flushed with trying to strike out for herself, and at little Miss Weezy, floating gayly on her plank; and he mused—
“What a blessing it is to be young and strong! I wish my children could appreciate this, and could know how happy they are.”
And at that very moment Kirke and Molly were thinking,—
“Won’t we have good times by and by, after Paul and Pauline have come?”
And little Miss Weezy was thinking; but she herself could hardly have told what she was thinking.