In the hot summer weather he would bathe twenty times a day, and was as much at home in the water as any dabchick.

And that was how I came to be more with him than was good for me.
There was a small river not far from my father's house, which at a certain point was dammed back by a weir of large stones to turn part of it aside into a mill-race.

The mill stood a little way down, under a steep bank.

It was almost surrounded with trees, willows by the water's edge, and birches and larches up the bank.

Above the dam was a fine spot for bathing, for you could get any depth you liked--from two feet to five or six; and here it was that most of the boys of the village bathed, and I with them.