"You wouldn't have been as brave as Tina, if you had saved Dawn," said Miss Bertha, "for you would have had no fears to overcome."
"I wasn't brave," confessed Christina, "only there was no time to stop to think."
"We will never say you're afraid again," said Dawn, looking at her gravely. "I'm not sure that I quite like being pulled out of the water by a girl; but I wasn't quite helpless, I helped to get myself out."
"And you were saved by your curls," said Puggy, a little scoffingly. "Tina hauled you up by your hair! Why does Tina always do the things I wonder!"
"Because," said Miss Bertha with much emphasis, "Tina always thinks of others before herself. An unselfish person is always brave in an emergency. It is only the selfish who are cowards."
"Then you really think I'm not a coward?" questioned Christina with anxious eyes.
"I am quite sure you are not," said Miss Bertha.
And the boys began to sing a piece of doggerel that they had invented themselves:
"United Kingdom we,
As brave as brave can be,
We all hold together
In fine and stormy weather.
And if we have to fight,
We do it with our might;
So three cheers for three,
United Kingdom we!"
In the kitchen Susy, hearing the song, said to Lucy: