"I'm all right," he declared. "One of the boys has just given me a drink of--of----" But it was a beverage the use of which was not generally approved in Churchton. Mrs. Phillips turned round suddenly. "Amy, did you have a drink, too, of--of--of--if 'Of' is what you call it?" "I did," said Amy firmly; "and I feel the better for it." "Well, get in, then, and I'll take you home." Peter grinned from the front seat of the car; Mrs. Phillips placed herself between the two victims on the back one; the life-savers, who had kept the discarded garments to dry, gave them all a few smiles and hand wavings; the two young women and their two young men looked on with some deference; the general crowd gave a little mock-cheer before turning its Sunday leisure to other forms of interest; and the small party whirled away. Amy leaned a tired, moist head, but a happy one, on Mrs. Phillips' shoulder. "He was so quick," she breathed, "and so brave, and so strong." She professed to believe that he had saved her life. Cope, silent as he looked straight ahead between Peter and Helga, was almost afraid that she had saved his. 17 _COPE AMONG CROSS-CURRENTS_ Next morning, at breakfast, Amy Leffingwell kept, for the most part, a rapt and meditative eye on her plate. Hortense gave her now and then an impatient, half-angry glare, and had to be cut short in some stinging observations on Cope. "But it _was_ foolish," Medora Phillips felt obliged to concede. "What in the world made you do it?" But Amy continued to smile at the table-cloth. She seemed to be intimating that there was a special folly which transcended mere general folly and approximated wisdom. After breakfast she spoke a few words to Carolyn. She had had all night to think the matter over; she now saw it from a new angle and in a new light. "You should have seen how he shook himself free from that sail, and all," she said. "And while we were swimming in he held his hand under my chin--at least part of the time. And when we reached the sandbars he put his arm through mine and helped me over every one." And in this state of mind she went off to her class. Cope was received by his own class with a subdued hilarity. His young people felt that he had shown poor judgment in going out on the water at all,--for the University, by tacit consent, left the lake pretty well alone. They thought that, once out, he had shown remarkably inept seamanship. And they thought that he had chosen a too near and too well-lighted stage for the exhibition of both. This forenoon the "Eighteenth Century Novelists" involved Smollett, and with every reference to the water looks of understanding traveled from student to student: that the class was of both sexes made the situation no better. Cope was in good enough physical condition,--the unspeakable draught from the unspeakable flask had ensured that,--but he felt what was in the air of the classroom and was correspondingly ill at ease.