Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/188

 coolness again, where he declared that every bit of Itchiness went out of his skin, that he felt all hunky-dory there, and that he was even game for a handicap race back to shore.

Back in the shallows once more, they had the most glorious of water-fights, smiting the smooth surface with the heel of their hands, and sending it rattling like buck-shot upon one another's streaming head and shoulders. Then, at Lonely's timely suggestion, both fell to smoking punk, earnestly and assiduously, to guard against any possible attack of fever and ague.

And just about the precise time that Lionel Clarence was being initiated into the mysteries of the back-dive, his zealous and solicitous grandmother, having fanned his supposedly sleeping face for a good hour and more, came to the conclusion that the patient was over-sleeping himself, and must promptly be fed.

So, having ordered up his broth and lime-water, she hesitatingly gave a gentle little shake to the patient, who straightway fell apart in her astounded hand. There she held what most certainly seemed to her a dismembered grandson, at arm's length, catching