* * * * *
It was a tea-party at Miss Bertha's. Puggy and Dawn and Christina were all there, and they were busy telling her about the lovely game they had played before the catastrophe occurred.
"And if I hadn't tumbled in the river, I would have won," said Dawn, "because I was riding away with my enemy's wife."
"No," said Puggy, "I was coming after you as hard as I could. You wouldn't have escaped me, and if Tina had played the game properly, she would have ridden back to me directly you fell off the pony!"
"But," said Christina, with big eyes, "Dawn was drowning!"
"Tina is so funny," said Dawn with a little chuckle. "She funked the river awfully when we went through it first, and then—"
"Then she proved herself a little heroine," said Miss Bertha.
"I was just too late," said Puggy. "It's a pity I wasn't there a minute sooner! My schoolmaster has a saying:
"'Opportunity makes the hero.'
"So Tina was the lucky one! I didn't have a chance."