Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/66

 no danger there. That's all I see, except Spence thrashing the water toward me when he spots my head. Then I went under again.

I couldn't swim a stroke. A swell rescuing hero, hey?

Spence, which has win cups in interscholastic swimming races, was the real hero. He had to rescue me! By some expert juggling we all managed to get in the canoe and to the bank of the lake, where we got out, all set-ups for pneumonia if it happened to come along. Spence runs to his car and gets the lap robe to wrap around Judy, and while he's gone Rags looks at me and sneers.

"What do you think you are—a movie hero?" he says tome. "Imagine going overboard to save a person's life and not even being able to swim!" He laughs long and loud.

None of that water has soaked through to my temper yet, and I'm just going to tie into him when Judy lays her wet hand on my equally wet arm.

"You—you can't swim at all, Gale?" she asks me, her eyes opening wide. Even bedraggled from the ducking in the lake, she looked like a million dollars.

"No, I can't, Judy," I says, getting good and red. "But I didn't think of that when I jumped in. I was thinking of—Oh, what's the use, I just made a fool of myself. Let's forget it!"

"I'll never forget it, Gale!" she says kind of soft, and her hand's still on my arm. "I think that was wonderful. Wonderful! That was real courage—Oh,