s first "dip." It wasn't so
_very_ bad after all, but just when he was getting up his spirits again,
and thinking ten minutes or so every morning were quickly over, all his
fears and dislike grew worse than ever when his father told him that in
a day or two he should begin to teach him to swim.

"Everybody, especially every English man and boy, should know how to
swim," Papa had said. "There is never any knowing the use it may be of,
both for one's self and others."

"Isn't it very hard to learn?" Harry asked, not venturing to say more.

"It takes some patience," his father said. "But by the time I have to
go--in three weeks or so--you should be able to swim fairly well, if you
have a lesson every day."

And Harry came home to tell Dora his troubles, which he worked himself
up to think were very great ones indeed.

There was no shirking it however. Papa, though very kind, was very
firm, and once he said a thing, it had to be done. So with a rather
white face, and looking very solemn, poor Harry set off every day for
his swimming lesson.

He was a quick and clever boy, and a strong boy, and this his father
knew. He would not have forced Harry to do anything for which he was
unfit, or that could have done him any harm. And after the first shivers
of fear and tremulous clinging to his father's hand were got over, it
went on better and faster than could have been expected. Harry didn't
mind its being difficult once he had left off being afraid, and a day or
two before his father had to leave them, Harry had the pleasure of
hearing him say to his mother, "He swims already very nearly as well as
I do myself."

Now I shall tell you why I have called this little story "Harry's
Reward."

Seacliff, the place at which these children were spending the summer,
was not a fashionable watering-place, with terraces and donkey-carriages
and bathing-machines, but a little village, where one or two cottages
were to be had for the season. There were also a few gentlemen's houses
in the neighbourhood, so that in fine weather merry groups met at the
little sheltered bay among the rocks, where the bathing was pleasantest.

One day, not very long before they were to leave Seacliff, Harry, having
finished his own morning swim, set off to walk home at his ease,
whistling as he went. He had chosen what was called the high path, a
footpath up above the lane, which was the regular road from the village
to the beach, but from which the lan