"There! I'd like to see any of you do that! Ha! Hum! Oh my, yes, indeed!"

"How do you do, Mr. Cock A. Doodle?" asked Jimmie.

"Ahem! I am pretty well, my young friend," replied the rooster. "And how
may you happen to be to-day? And how are your sisters, Lulu and Alice
Wibblewobble?"

"We are very well," answered Lulu and Alice, and Lulu went on: "Don't you
wish you could swim, Mr. Doodle?"

"I can," said the rooster, and he strutted back and forth at the edge of
the pond. "Certainly I can swim. What put the notion into your heads that
I can't?"

"We never saw you," spoke Jimmie.

"Ahem! Perhaps not. You never saw me stand on one foot and jump over a
barrel, but that doesn't prove that I can't do it," replied Mr. Doodle. "I
can swim if I choose. I have never cared to, that's all."

"Try now," suggested Lulu, for she didn't believe that rooster could swim,
no matter what he said.

"Oh, the water is too cold to go swimming now," said Mr. Doodle. "I never
swim in cold water."

"Why, it's as warm as warm can be," declared Alice, and she splashed a few
drops upon the rooster, so he could feel it.