"If you ask me," Red went on more easily, "I should say you were lucky.
You were lucky to have that swing seat under you."

Johnnie Green rose slowly to his feet.

"There's something queer about this," he declared.

"That's so," Red agreed. "There is. You'd just asked for another hard
push. . . . And you got one--a harder one than I could have given
you. . . . So I don't see what you're complaining about."

And then he pretended that he didn't understand why Johnnie Green tried
to hit him.

XX

THE SWIMMING HOLE

After the affair at the swing it was as much as a week before Johnnie
Green saw anything of his neighbor Red.

It was almost a week before Snowball felt like butting anybody. Even
when other sheep bullied him Snowball edged away from them; and once he
would have run into them head first.

Somehow he couldn't forget that frightful jolt he had received when he
knocked Johnnie Green out of the swing.

At last, however, he tried a gentle butt one day against the soft side
of one of his mates. And finding only pleasure, and no pain, in the
trick he became once more one of the most active butters in Farmer
Green's whole flock.

Now, Johnnie Green had noticed that for a few days Snowball was
unusually well behaved. And Snowball's gentleness did not please him.
For Johnnie had hoped that sometime Snowball would butt the neighbor's
boy Red.

So Johnnie Green began to whistle a merry tune a little later, when he
chanced to see Snowball charging the hired man as he crossed the
pasture.

Not long after that Johnnie Green went swimming. He found other boys at
the swimming hole, which they had made by damming Broad Brook where it
cut across the end of the meadow. Among the swimmers was the boy Red. It
was the first time Johnnie had seen him since that day when Snowball
butted Johnnie.

When Johnnie spied Red in the water he thought for a moment or two that
he would find Red's clothes on the bank and tie knots in them. That was
a favorite trick of Red's--tying hard knots in other boys' clothes.
Sometimes he even wet the knots, to make them harder to untie.

But Johnnie Green decided that he wouldn't knot Red's clothes. Besides,
Red seemed to be keeping a watchful eye on them.

Johnnie slipped out of his own clothes quickly and soon he had dived off
a flat rock and joined the boys in the swimming hole.

Red had called "Hullo!" pleasantly enough. And then Johnnie was sure he
said something in a