"Don't, Noreen, it's her pater." That was Gabrielle speaking. Joey pulled herself together.
"I'm all right—only it's ... it's so heavenly. Did you hear, Father's alive!"
Noreen seized her round the waist. "Yes, I heard, and it wasn't heartlessness, only you did look funny for a minute. Joey, I am glad; and isn't it queer and topping that everything's gone and happened like this. If there had been no flood, or John had driven us to Deeping Royal as he intended, we should have been up the twin towers with the rest, and you would never have heard this."
"And if I hadn't been caught in the sea-roke that Sunday, and known you were down the trap-door, I shouldn't have known where to look for you when you called 'Help!'" Joey said to Jean Corvette.
"And if you had not risked your life to rescue me, Mademoiselle Joey, I should never have talked again," he said.
"And if we hadn't been Joey's special friends and waited for her at the reservoir, I suppose the old Professor would have got away, and most of this wouldn't have happened," Gabrielle suggested seriously. "We're all very wet, and Matron will be cross to-morrow; but it's all been gloriously worth while."
"Hasn't it just!" Joey cried ecstatically. "And now, if Jean doesn't mind, let's get up that ladder. You bet John will be looking out for us as soon as he has settled the Professor, and I know he had some plan when he said he would drive him."
Jean made no objection, though he was still too much exhausted to go with them. But the three friends, undeterred by wet and clinging garments, climbed the shaky ladders to what was left of the top floor of the tower, where they found the electric torch which Jean must have used lying close under a loop-hole window.
"Of course a torch-flash isn't easy to read in daylight, but there's no sun, and it's getting darker," Joey suggested.
"Then it must be past high tide," Noreen said joyfully. The three stood at the loop-hole, looking out for a minute in silence over the dreary grey waste of water. A wicker hen-coop and a large bath-tub washed aimlessly about near the walls of their refuge, farther off a poor drowned sheep showed, half submerged.