ine, please--two dollars--"

She signed her name.

"Two dollars a lesson, with our iron-bound guarantee. Thank you, madam!
Many thanks! Keep the duplicate for your own reference. And I am leaving
you a complete catalogue of our courses. You may be interested in
something else later on. And now I will wish you--"

And thus it happened that Biscuit Westfall learned to swim.

Undoubtedly the proudest moment of his whole life was the one when he
received his diploma from the Inter-State Correspondence School. To the
unprejudiced eye this diploma looked more like the document that is
drawn forth from the spy's boot in the war melodrama, than the sheepskin
of a scholastic institution. It was decorated with stars and garters,
wafers and lozenges; but to Biscuit's unsophisticated gaze it was quite
the most important document since the Declaration of Independence.

If Biscuit had worked hard, so had his mother. She had taken a peculiar
interest in demonstrating the truth of her oft-repeated assertion that
one may learn to swim before going into the water.

She replaced without complaint the oilcloth on the kitchen table which
had gone to pieces under Biscuit's efforts to master the scissors-kick.
She sewed on in silence the numerous buttons that came off. She darned
without comment the knees of many stockings that gave way before the
edge of the table. And she paid with unaccustomed cheerfulness the cost
of each lesson as it arrived. Whether Biscuit or his mother was prouder
of the diploma when it came, would have been hard to tell.

The swimming lessons remained a dead secret until the course was
completed and the diploma actually in the hands of the graduate. On one
or two occasions Biscuit had been unable to suppress the intelligence
that he knew something he wasn't going to tell, but as nobody had
pressed him for particulars, the news came as a distinct surprise. And
it was divulged on the same day that the diploma was received.

When the usual swim was proposed, instead of starting dolefully for home
as had been his wont, Biscuit slapped the proponent on the back and
cried:

"All right! I'm with you!"

"Huh?" asked Sube with a blank stare.

"Uh-huh, me! Why not?"

"Your mother gone away?"

"No, course she ain't!"

"Maybe you've learned to swim on dry land!" taunted Sube.

"I sure have!" replied Biscuit with a lofty swagger. "I can swim
better'n any you fellers. I can do the trudgeon and the crawl and the