Blue Bonnet demonstrated the stroke again and again, while the other girls watched and imitated as they sat or sprawled on the grassy bank. Sarah bent her whole mind to the acquiring of the proper arm action; lay face-down and kicked scientifically; then, convinced of her preparation for the feat, boldly entered the water. "Good for you, Sallikins!" cried Blue Bonnet. "The others must be afraid of getting their feet wet." Then she sang tauntingly: "Mother, may I go out to swim? Yes, my darling daughter, Hang your clothes on a hickory limb-- But don't go near the water!" Thus challenged, Kitty stepped shrinkingly into the cold water. "If Sarah will swim from me to you, I'll try it after her," she bargained. It was perhaps a distance of three yards from where she stood, waist-deep, to the big rock whereon Blue Bonnet was perched, laughing at them; but the Hellespont could hardly have loomed wider to the anxious eyes of Hero, than did this narrow channel now appear to the four novices. "All right," agreed Sarah with dogged determination. She shut her eyes, screwed up her face, spread her arms, struck out with her feet and started. If a hippopotamus had suddenly slipped off the bank there could hardly have been a greater splash; Sarah kicked madly, puffing, panting, and churning the water into foam. All to no avail. Before she had gone a yard she sank like a paving-stone to the bottom of the pool. Blue Bonnet, convulsed with laughter, went down after her, but it took the combined efforts of herself and Kitty to bring the struggling Sarah to the surface. Sputtering and choking and much puzzled over the failure of her scientific method, Sarah retired to the bank to get her breath. "Kitty's turn," she said inexorably as soon as she could speak. Kitty found the bottom no less speedily, but scrambled up by herself and went at it again until she was able to progress almost two feet before going down to "call on the fishes," as Blue Bonnet said. It remained for Debby to cover herself with glory. Disdaining science and the instructions of the teacher, she took a lesson from Nature and struck out like a puppy. Straight to Blue Bonnet she swam, struggled up on the big boulder beside her, gasping and breathless, but delighted at her own success. "Bravo!" cried the girls, quite overcome with admiration. Emboldened by her triumph the others tried again and again, and while not wildly successful were so far encouraged that they lost their first great fear of the water. And that, as every swimmer knows, is the first step towards victory. "After you've all learned," said Blue Bonnet a little later, as they all sat on the veranda rail drying their hair, "we'll go over to the reservoir above Jonah some time and have a real swim. That is, if Grandmother's willing." She was glad she had remembered to add that last provision; it would have won an approving look from Aunt Lucinda.