It _was_ cold. But he
meant to manage it here, just as he had managed with the sand-slopes.
Two heads bobbed on the water where but one had bobbed before.
Ceremonially, at least, the rite was complete.
"It's never so cold the second time," declared Cope encouragingly. "One dip
doesn't make a swim, any more than one swallow--"
He flashed his soles in the sunlight and was once again immersed, gulping,
in a maelstrom of his own making.
"Twice, to oblige you," said Randolph. "But no more. I'll leave the rest to
the sun and the air."
Cope, out again, ran up and down the sands for a hundred feet or so. "I
know something better than this," he declared presently. He threw himself
down and rolled himself in the abundance of fine, dry, clean sand.
"An arenaceous ulster--speaking etymologically," he said. He came back to
the clump of basswoods near which Randolph was sitting on a short length of
drift wood, with his back to the sun, and sat down beside him.
"You're welcome to it," said Randolph, laughing; "but how are you going to
get it off? By another dip? Certainly not by the slow process of time.
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