Page:Fighting blood (IA fightingblood00witw).pdf/67

 if you had been drowned! You knew you couldn't swim and that the lake was deep, and yet"

This is steaming Rags up. He takes out a wallet and removes a bill, stepping over to us.

"Here, boy," he says, offering me the bill, "get yourself some dry clothes and—eh—run along now. If there's any change, you might—eh—buy yourself some swimming lessons!"

I knocked the bill out of his hand and he would of surely followed it to the ground if Judy hadn't pushed quickly in between us. She gives Rags as two-handed a bawling out as I ever heard in my life, and when she got through, Rags looked like a whipped stray dog.

Spence come along at the tail end of the thing, and his eyes twinkled as Judy wound up by turning her back on Rags and taking my arm to Spence's car. After changing the punctured shoe Spence drove Judy and: me home, and she insisted on spreading half the fap robe over me. We held hands under it like a couple of kids all the ways to the house, and if you could ever see Judy you would know that a little thing like being ducked in a lake is nothing compared to that!

Well, Mrs. Willcox is scared stiff when she sees us come in looking like a couple of drownded rats, but Judy laughs things off and runs up to change her clothes while I go to my room and do likewise. I'm just about dressed when Judy knocks on my door and says to come right down to the parlor when I'm ready, because her mother is making us both something hot to keep off a cold. So I go downstairs, and there's some hot lemonade and Judy's dissolving rock candy