So far from being impressed or put down, Judith took her stand as usual on the offensive. “’Fore I’d be afraid of a little rain!” she said severely, an answer which caused Arnold to seem disconcerted, and again to look at her hard with the startled expression of arrested attention which from the first her remarks and strictures seemed to cause in him.

They took the pinto out.  Judith rode him bareback at a gallop down to the swimming pool and dived from his back into the yellow water shimmering hotly in the sun.  This feat stung Arnold into a final fury.  Without an instant’s pause he sprang in after her.  As he came to the top, swimming strongly with a lusty, regular stroke, and rapidly overhauled the puffing Judith, his face shone brilliantly with relief.  He was another child.  The petulant boy of a few moments before had vanished.  “Beat you to the springboard!” he sputtered joyously, swimming low and spitting water as he slid easily through it at twice Judith’s speed.  She set her teeth and drove her tough little body with a fierce concentration of all her forces, but Arnold was sitting on the springboard, dangling his red and swollen feet when she arrived.

She clambered out and sat down beside him, silent for an instant.  Then she said with a detached air, “You can swim better than any boy I ever saw.”

Arnold’s open, blond face flushed scarlet at this statement.  He looked at the dripping little brown rat beside him, and returned impulsively, “I’d rather play with you than any girl I ever saw.”

They were immediately reduced to an awkward silence by these two unpremeditated superlatives.  Judith found nothing to say beyond a “huh” in an uncertain accent, and they turned with relief to alarums and excursions from the forgotten and abandoned Sylvia and Lawrence.  Sylvia was forcibly restraining her little brother from following Judith into the water.  “You mustn’t, Buddy!  You know we aren’t allowed to go in till an hour after eating and you only had your breakfast a little while ago!” She led him away bellowing.

Arnold, surprised, asked Judith, “’Cept for that, are you allowed to go in whenever you want?”

“Sure!  We’re not to stay in more than ten minutes at a time, and then get out and run around for half an hour in the sun.  There’s a clock under a little roof-thing, nailed up to a tree over there, so’s we can tell.”

“And don’t you get what-for, if you go in with all your clothes on this way?”

“I haven’t any clothes on but my rompers,” said Judith.  “They’re just the same as a bathing suit.”  She snatched back her prerogative of asking questions.  “Where did you learn to swim so?”

“At the seashore!  I get taken there a month every summer.  It’s the most fun of any of the places I get taken.  I’ve had lessons there from the professor of swimming ever since I was six.  Madrina doesn’t know what to do with me but have me take lessons.  I like the swimming ones the best.  I hate dancing—­and going to museums.”