"Robbie! Answer me."
"Mam?"
"Did you hoe that corn your father told you to?"
"Yes mam."
"All of it? Did you hoe all of it?"
" Prett' near all of it." Well begun is half done. One hill is a
good beginning, and half done is pretty nearly all.
"Go and finish it."
"I will if you'll let me go swimmin'."
It flashes upon him that even now by running he can catch up with
the other fellows. He can finishing the hoeing when he gets back.
"You'll do it anyhow, and you're not going swimming. Now, that's
the end of it. You march out to that garden this minute, or I'll
take a stick to you. And don't let me hear another whimper out of
you. Robbie! Come back here and shut that door properly. I shall
tell your father how you have acted. wouldn't be ashamed - I'd be
ashamed to show temper that way."
It says for children to obey their parents, but if more boys minded
their mothers there would be fewer able to swim. While I shrink
with horror from even seeming to encourage dropping the hoe when the
sewing-machine gets to going good, by its thunderous spinning
throwing up an impervious wall of sound to conceal retreat into the
back alley, across the street, up the alley back of Alexander's, and
so on up to Fountain Avenue in time to catch up with the gang, still
I regard swimming as an exercise of the extremest value in the
development of the growing boy.
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