There was an hour and a half of practice, not all hard work; much of the time they would be paddling leisurely or resting on their oars while Mr. Burns coached them from the motor-boat; or they would be studying the performance of their rivals, the Corinthians, on the farther side of the lake, and prowling about in the Corinthian neighborhood as unassumingly as possible.

But at the last there would be a racing start and a sprint that always brought them to the float with brown bodies glistening and foreheads bedewed and chests heaving—so that the two buckets of water allowed each man seemed utterly inadequate, and they longed tremendously for the debilitating and forbidden swim!

Still, after they had made the most of their two buckets and had rubbed down and dressed and were seated again in the big open wagon, with the cool breeze drying their second sweat, they had no regrets—none at least if they had prepared that morning for the afternoon recitations to which now they were speedily whirled.