ncentration 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."

"What else can you do?" asked Judith with a noticeable abatement of
her previous disesteem.

Arnold hesitated, his own self-confidence as evidently dashed.
"Well--I can fence a little--and talk French; we are in Paris winters,
you know. We don't stay in Lydford for the winter. Nobody does."

"_Everybody_ goes away?" queried Judith. "What a funny town!"

"Oh, except the people who _live_ there--the Vermonters."

Judith was more and more at a loss. "Don't _you_ live there?"

"No, we don't _live_ anywhere. We just stay places for a