Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/131

Rh standing in her tiny slate-walled dressing-room which, with a dozen others, bordered the swimming-pool, and donned the regulation dark blue swimming-suit, sleeveless, skirtless, reaching barely to her knees. She had been painfully self-conscious the first two or three times she had had to appear before the dozen girls and women in the pool in the abbreviated costume, but by this time she was perfectly at ease.

She was still humming when she appeared from the shower-bath five minutes later, sat down on the edge of the pool, and dangled her bare toes carelessly in the water. There was an ear-splitting din of high shrieks and hysterical laughter in the pool to-night. There usually was. Reba liked it. As she sat there dangling her toes, suddenly, with no warning, somebody gave her a shove from behind. It was little Lollie Terrence. Reba caught her shrill laugh before she struck the water.

What a friendly little creature Lollie was! Think of her bothering to play tricks on her—staid and proper, and twenty-five! Why, Lollie could do toe-dancing. Lollie was a great favorite. Well, it just seemed as if the world was possessed to be friendly to Reba to-day. She came up to the surface all smiles—rather sputtery ones—and pretended, with a playful motion, to splash water at Lollie Terrence, who was already dressed, and bent double over her joke beside the door of her dressing-room.

"All ready for a dive?" one of the instructors sang out to Reba. "Come, Miss Jerome, let's do three perfect ones to-night."

Reba's suit was clinging to her tightly as she walked out to the end of the spring-board. Her rubber cap