“Well, I swum!” was the guide’s greeting.  “Ye did do it!”

“Yes, sir; and I shouldn’t mind doing it again.  Oh, it was such sport, Miss Elting.  Please, may we go up and have another slide?” begged Harriet.

“Oh, goodness, yes.  Please let us,” urged Jane.

“By no means.  I am amazed that you should ask such a thing.  I forbid it.  Please get Tommy, if you are going to.  She will stay there as long as we will wait here.  I really don’t know what I am going to do with Tommy.”

“I wish you would do something, Miss Elting.  She surely will be the death of me.  Think of me, with my weak heart, having to submit to such terribly exciting adventures,” complained Margery.

“Just listen to Buster,” chuckled Crazy Jane.  “We must be so very careful of her.”

“Well, I suppose we might as well get in if we are going to,” decided Harriet.  “We can’t be any wetter than we are, Jane.”

“But we can be colder.  All right.  I’m with you.”

Harriet dived in to get the shock over, coming up blowing.  A splash followed hers and Jane came up beside her, shaking the water from her head and ears.

“My, but it’s cold, isn’t it, darlin’,” she gasped.

“Cold as a snowbank,” answered Harriet.

“I’ll race you to the other side.”

“Go you!  Now!”

How the water did fly as they struck out in overhand strokes, shouting and laughing, cheered on by Miss Elting and Margery, on the other side by the irrepressible Tommy, who was dancing up and down on the shore, shouting and clapping her hands in great glee!  The swimmers landed, laughing merrily as they made for shore.  But they did not wait to argue with Tommy.  Instead they picked her up bodily and tossed her into the pond.  Tommy screamed and tried to fight, but she had little opportunity for resistance before she went in with a splash.

They sprang in after her, pulling the girl down, she having got to her feet in the meantime.

“Swim! swim, or we will hold your head under!” threatened Jane.

Tommy refused to swim.

“Grab her foot.  We’ll tow her,” commanded Harriet.  Suiting the action to the word, she grasped one of Tommy’s ankles, and throwing herself on her back began to swim with feet and free arm for the opposite side of the pond.

“Hooray!” cried Jane, making a couple of leaps forward, and getting a firm hold of the other ankle of the now loudly screaming Tommy.  “Toot, toot!  The tug is going ahead.  How do you like being towed, darlin’?”

Tommy’s yells indicated that she did not fancy it, especially being towed feet first.  Her head went under water almost instantly.  Tommy was obliged to help herself or drown.  She began working her arms, trying to keep her head above water, but found it awkward swimming that way.  She never had tried the feet first style of swimming.  No one of the party ever had, except Harriet, who could make very good progress that way.