endance at Steve's swimming
class compulsory for the younger boys and so have instituted a new
feature in the course of physical instruction. But Steve, willing to
teach a few fellows who could already swim the finer points of the
science, balked at teaching the rudiments to a half-hundred water-shy
youths who would have to be coaxed and coddled. Mr. Conklin tried his
best to persuade him, but Steve refused firmly.

They had a whole lot of fun during that swimming hour. Fowler and a
younger chap named Toll were the more accomplished performers in the
class, barring Steve himself, and every session ended with several very
earnest races in which Fowler, allowing Toll a five-yard handicap,
usually nosed out the younger boy in a contest of four times the length
of the tank. Then there was generally a free-for-all, the fellows lining
up on the edge of the pool, diving at the word from Steve and swimming
to the further end, where, after touching the wall, they turned and
hustled back to the start. Sometimes when football practice had been
more than usually gruelling, Steve stayed out of the water and
instructed from the floor, but more often he went in with the others and
followed them in their practice swims. Naturally it was the fancy diving
and the racing strokes that most of the fellows wanted to learn, but
Steve, who had never in his life before tried to teach anyone anything,
displayed a good deal of hard common-sense as an instructor and insisted
that each of his pupils should master one thing thoroughly before taking
up another. The result was that, barring one or two fellows who would
probably in any case have failed to become expert swimmers, the class
made really remarkable progress, and there came a time, although it was
considerably later in the school year, when both Jay Fowler and
Hatherton Williams could equal most of Steve's feats.

Tom started with the class, wisely deciding after his experience with
Eric Sawyer that the ability to keep one's head out of water was a fine
thing to have. But Tom was not cut out for a human fish and soon gave it
up. Roy Draper learned fairly well. He tried to induce Harry to join the
class, but Harry preferred to stay with Tom and look on from the floor.
When winter set in, Steve's class increased in numbers until in January
he was conducting the natatory education of more than two dozen fellows.
It was Mr. Conklin who arranged for an exhibition the latter part of the
winter a