to teach me to swim and to dive, with any other lessons in preparedness
of body and mind which I was old enough to profit by. And if the true
tales of his own experiences were more interesting than the Penny
Numbers, it was better still to feel that one was qualifying in one's
own proper person for a life of adventure.

During the winter Mr. Wood built a boat, which was christened the
_Adela_, after his wife. It was an interesting process to us all. I hung
about and did my best to be helpful, and both Jem and I spoiled our
everyday trousers, and rubbed the boat's sides, the day she was painted.
It was from the _Adela_ that Jem and I had our first swimming-lessons,
Mr. Wood lowering us with a rope under our arms, by which he gave us as
much support as was needed, whilst he taught us how to strike out.

We had swimming-races on the canal, and having learned to swim and dive
without our clothes, we learnt to do so in them, and found it much more
difficult for swimming and easier for diving. It was then that the
trousers we had damaged when the _Adela_ was built came in most
usefully, and saved us from having to attempt the at least equally
difficult task of persuading my mother to let us spoil good ones in an
amusement which had the unpardonable quality of being "very odd."

Dear old Charlie had as much fun out of the boat as we had, though he
could not learn to dive. He used to look as if every minute of a pull up
the canal on a sunny evening gave him pleasure; and the brown Irish
spaniel Jem gave him used to swim after the boat and look up in
Charlie's face as if it knew how he enjoyed it. And later on, Mr. Wood
taught Bob Furniss to row and Charlie to steer; so that Charlie could
sometimes go out and feel quite free to stop the boat when and where he
liked. That was after he started so many collections of insects and
water-weeds, and shells, and things you can only see under a microscope.
Bob and he used to take all kinds of pots and pans and nets and dippers
with them, so that Charlie could fish up what he wanted, and keep things
separate. He was obliged to keep the live things he got for his
fresh-water aquarium in different jam-pots, because he could never be
sure which would eat up which till he knew them better, and the
water-scorpions and the dragon-fly larvae ate everything. Bob Furniss did
not mind pulling in among the reeds and waiting as long as you wanted.
Mr. Wood sometimes wanted to get back to his work,