Part 27 (1/2)
”If,” observed Ed, significantly.
CHAPTER XVIII
BELLE SWIMS
The tide was just right. In their newest bathing suits the motor girls had a.s.sembled on the beach in the hot sun. Their white arms and necks showed the winter of indoors, but their faces had already taken on the tan of the seaside. Soon arms and necks would be in accord.
The boys were out on the float, splas.h.i.+ng about, occasionally ”shooting the chutes” and diving from the pier.
”Is the water cold?” asked Cora, going down to where the waves splashed on the pebbles. Daintily she dipped in--just a toe. ”How is it, Jack?”
Jack was tumbling about near the beach like a porpoise.
”Sw--swell!” he managed to gasp, the hesitancy being because a wave insisted on looking at his tongue, or trying to scrub his already white teeth--Cora could not decide which.
”Is it really warm?”
”Of course!”
”It feels cold.”
”I know. That's because you stand there and stick one toe in. Get wet all over and--you'll feel----”
Jack was suddenly plunged under water by Walter, who had come swimming up, so the sentence was not finished. But Cora could guess it.
”I'm going in; come on, girls!” she cried.
”Oh, wait a little,” pleaded Belle.
”And you said you were going to learn to swim to-day!” challenged Eline.
She looked particularly well in her dainty bathing costume.
”Well, I--I didn't know the water would be so deep!”
”Deep!” echoed Cora. ”It's getting shallower all the while. The tide is going out. Come on.”
She waded out a short distance, bravely repressing the spasmodic screams that sprang to her lips, and turning to the others said:
”It--it's--fi--fine--co--come on--in!”
”Listen to her!” cried Bess. ”It must be like a refrigerator to make her stammer like that.”
”It is not,” said Cora. ”It--it's real--real warm--when you--you--get used to it.”
”I have heard said,” remarked Eline with studied calmness, ”that one can get used to anything--if one only makes up one's mind to it.”
”Come--come on----”