Austin and His Friends | Page 9

quite sure if I ought to--you see the mistress wants all this finished up by the afternoon, and then----"
"But you must!" insisted Austin. "You forget that I've only got one leg, so I can't swim as I used, and you've got to come and take care I don't get drowned. 'O weep for Adonais--he is dead!' How angry Aunt Charlotte would be. And then she'd cry, poor dear, and go into hideous mourning for her poor Austin. Come along, Lubin--but wait, I must just go and get a couple of towels. Oh, I'm simply mad for the water. I'll be back in less than a flash."
Lubin drove his spade into the earth, turned down his sleeves, and rested--a fair-skinned, bronzed, wholesome object, good to look at--while Austin stumped away. In less than five minutes the two youths started off together, tramping through the long, lush meadow-grass which lay between the end of the garden and the river. The sun burned fiercely overhead, and the air quivered in the heat.
"Isn't it wonderful!" cried Austin, when they reached the edge of the water, and were standing under the shade of some trees that overhung the towing-path. "Come, Lubin, strip--I'm half undressed already. Look at the white and purple lights in the water--aren't they marvellous? Now we're going right down into them. Oh the freedom of air, and colour, and body--how I do hate clothes! I say, how funny my stump looks, doesn't it? Just like a great white rolling-pin. You must go in first, Lubin, and then you'll be prepared to catch me when I begin drowning."
Lubin, standing nude and shapely, like a fair Greek statue, for a moment on the bank, took a silent header and disappeared. Then Austin prepared to follow. He tumbled rather than plunged into the water, and, unable to attain an erect position owing to his imperfect organism, would have fared badly if Lubin had not caught him in his arms and turned him deftly over on his back.
"You just content yourself with floating face upwards, Sir," he said. "There's no sort of use in trying to strike out, you'd only sink to the bottom like a boat with a hole in it. There--let me hold you like this; one hand'll do it. Look out for the river-weeds. Now try and work your foot. Seems to be making you go round and round, somehow. But that don't matter. A bathe's a bathe, all said and done. How jolly cool it is!"
"Isn't it exquisite?" murmured Austin, with closed eyes. "I do think that drowning must be a lovely death. We're like the minnows, Lubin, 'staying their wavy bodies 'gainst the streams, to taste the luxury of sunny beams tempered with coolness.' That's what our wavy bodies are doing now. Don't you like it? 'Now more than ever it seems rich to die----'"
But the next moment, owing probably to Lubin having lost his equilibrium, the young rhapsodist found himself, spluttering and half-choked, nearer to the bed of the river than the surface, while his leg was held in chancery by a network of clinging water-weeds. Lubin had some slight difficulty in extricating him, and for the moment, at least, his poetic fantasies came to an abrupt and unromantic finish.
"Here, get on my back, and I'll swim you out as far as them water-lilies," said Lubin, giving him a dexterous hoist. "I'm awfully keen on the yellow sort, and they look wonderful fine ones. That's better. Now, Sir, you can just imagine yourself any drownded heathen as comes into your head, only hold tight and don't stir. If you do you'll get drownded in good earnest, and I shall have to settle accounts with your aunt afterwards. Are you ready? Right, then. And now away we go."
He struck out strongly and slowly, with Austin crouching on his shoulders. They arrived in safety at the point aimed at, and managed to tear away a grand cluster of the great, beautiful yellow flowers; but the process was a very ticklish one, and the struggle resulted, not unnaturally, in Austin becoming dislodged from his not very secure position, and floundering head foremost into the depths. Lubin caught him as he rose again, and, taking him firmly by one hand, helped him to swim alongside of him back to the shore. It was a difficult feat, and by the time they had accomplished the distance they were both pretty well exhausted.
"You have been good to me, Lubin," gasped Austin, as he flung himself sprawling on the grass. "I've had a lovely time--haven't you too? Was I very heavy? Perhaps it is rather a bore to have only one leg when one wants to swim. But now you can always say you've saved me from drowning, can't you. I should have gone under a dozen