e that," continued Sube quite
unperturbed. "I'd take a swim every day in the year. And when I'm a man
I'm goin' to have a swimmin'-hole made right in my own house, and then I
can go in whenever I want to!"

"You'd oughta be a Baptis'," suggested Gizzard.

"What's bein' a Baptis' got to do with goin' in swimmin'?" asked Sube
cautiously.

"Why, _they've_ got a swimmin'-hole right inside their church!" declared
Gizzard with an air of omniscient loftiness.

"A swimmin'-hole in the Baptis' Church!" howled Sube derisively. "You
make me laugh! Say, Giz, who's been stringin' you?"

"Nobody ain't been stringin' me," defended Gizzard stoutly. "Jus' shows
you don't know much! There's one there, 'cause my dad painted it jus'
last week with two coats of white 'namel and--"

"What in the dickens would they have a swimmin'-hole in a church for?
Jus' tell me that!" demanded Sube conclusively.

"To bap-_tize_ people!" replied Gizzard, apparently greatly bored at
this display of ignorance. "Didn't you know the Baptis'es don't jus'
squirt a little water on a baby's bean? They let 'em grow up and then
duck 'em all over."

Sube had a vague recollection of something of the sort, but his interest
in the matter was material rather than doctrinal. "How big is this
wonderful swimmin'-hole?" he asked guardedly.

"Big enough to swim in, all right," Gizzard assured him.

"Where do they keep it?" Sube was feeling his way carefully, fearing a
hoax of some sort.

"It's down under the minister's desk," Gizzard told him with an air of
vast importance. "You can't see it when you go in the church, but all
you got to do is press a little button, and _Bingo!_--There's your
swimmin'-hole!" A sort of "Behold!--" movement of the hand accompanied
this exposition.

Sube was torn between belief and skepticism. He hoped that what Gizzard
was telling him was the truth. But the appearance of secret places at
the pressing of buttons was associated in his mind with hip-pocket
literature, rather than with the House of God. However, Gizzard's
responses to his persistent questioning were so earnest and so
convincing that Sube had just about concluded to become a Baptist, when
Gizzard chanced to remark that he knew what the mysterious indoor pool
was called.

"What?" asked the others in a chorus.

"My dad says they call it 'mershum,'" was the lofty response.

Sube's Baptist leanings collapsed like a house of cards. "Now I _know_
you're lyin'," he growl