"Why, he has been in the Serpentine, and was nigh drowned, and had to be
taken to the 'Mane Society and put into a hot bath, and all his clothes
shrunk that much as you never seed."

"I thought the ice weren't strong enough to bear," John said, taking his
pipe from his mouth; "one of my mates tells me as he heard a chap going
along with skates say as it weren't strong enough on the Serpentine to
hold a cat."

"No more it ain't, John; but Carrie Hill's little dog run on and fell
through, and nothing would do but that Evan must go out and risk his
life to fetch it out. And a nice business he made of it; when he got
close out to the dog down he went hisself, and would have been drowned
as sure as fate if a young gent as was a-standing there hadn't swam out
and brought him in. And I think you ought to speak to him, John, for
such venturesome ways; he don't mind my speaking no more than the wind
a-blowing."

John Holl smoked his pipe in silence for some time, looking solemnly
into the fire; the number of facts and ideas presented suddenly to him
were too great to be instantly taken in and grappled with.

"And how do you feel now, Evan?" he said at last; "cold right through
the bones?"

"No, father; I am as warm as need be; and what do you think? I have got
thirty-eight bob and some coppers which they 'scribed for me."

"Did they, now?" John Holl said. Then after taking in this new fact, and
turning it over in different lights, he said to his wife, "Well, Sarah,
it seems to me that if the people who saw our Evan go into the water
subscribed well-nigh upon two pounds for the boy, they must have thought
that what he did warn't a thing for him to be jawed for, but a brave,
good-hearted sort of action; and I ain't no manner of doubt, Sarah, that
that's just what you think it yerself, only you are a bit scared over
the thought that he might have been drowned, which is natural and
woman-like. It seems to me as Evan has done a wery honourable kind o'
action. I know as I should have liked to have done it myself, though I
holds that a man can't have too much of hot water and plenty of soap in
it, cold water allus giving me the shivers, and being no good for
getting out dirt--not where its ground in pretty thick. I suppose its
cos of this that I didn't larn to swim. Evan, my boy, your father feels
proud of yer, and so does your mother--as proud as a peacock--though she
don't think it's right to say so."

Whereupon Mrs. Holl