Page:Stanwood Pier--Crashaw brothers.djvu/181

Rh There was an hour and a half of practice, not all hard work; much of the time they  would be paddling leisurely or resting on  their oars while Mr. Burns coached them from  the motor-boat; or they would be studying the  performance of their rivals, the Corinthians,  on the farther side of the lake, and prowling  about in the Corinthian neighborhood as unassumingly as possible.

But at the last there would be a racing start and a sprint that always brought them to  the float with brown bodies glistening and foreheads bedewed and chests heaving—so that the  two buckets of water allowed each man seemed  utterly inadequate, and they longed tremendously for the debilitating and forbidden swim!

Still, after they had made the most of their two buckets and had rubbed down and dressed  and were seated again in the big open wagon,  with the cool breeze drying their second  sweat, they had no regrets—none at least if  they had prepared that morning for the afternoon recitations to which now they were  speedily whirled.