[Pg 67] By Mrs. Molesworth. HATE the sea, I hate bathing, and I don't want to learn to swim. What's the use of learning to swim? I'm not going to be a sailor. I don't like ships, and I don't want ever to go in one, and I just wish, oh, I do wish papa hadn't come here!" HATE "Harry! how can you?" said his sister Dora. "Papa who is so kind, and when we have all been looking forward so to his coming." "I know—that's the worst of it," said Harry. "I've been looking forward as much as any one, and now it's all spoilt by his saying I must learn to swim." "I only wish I could learn!" sighed Dora. She was two years older than Harry, but she had lately had a bad fever. The family had come to the seaside to give her change of air, but not for[Pg 68] some weeks yet, if at all this summer, was poor Dora to be allowed to bathe. And she loved the sea, and bathing, and boating, and everything to do with the sea. She was like her father, who, though not a sailor, had travelled much and far, both by land and water; whereas Harry "took after," as the country people say, his mother, who had lived in her youth in a warm climate, and shivered at every breath of cold or even fresh air. It did not matter so much for a delicate lady to be afraid of the wind and the sea, but it was a great pity for a healthy boy to be fanciful or timid; and Harry's mother herself was very anxious that he should become more manly. She was very disappointed that she could not get him to bathe when they came to the seaside, but it was no use, and she and nurse and Dora all agreed that the only thing to do was to "wait till Papa came." [Pg 68] Papa had come now, and Harry had had his first "dip." It wasn't so very bad after all, but just when he was getting up his spirits again, and thinking ten minutes or so every morning were quickly over, all his fears and dislike grew worse than ever when his father told him that in a day or two he should begin to teach him to swim. "Everybody, especially every English man and boy, should know how to swim," Papa had said. "There is never any knowing the use it may be of, both for one's self and others." "Isn't it very hard to learn?" Harry asked, not venturing to say more. "It
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