"Peter, how could you?" exclaimed Brenda, when they reached the schoolroom.
"How could I what?" demanded Peter, looking puzzled.
"Why, speak about poor Aunt Dorothy before grandfather," said the girl. "Nobody does; he can't bear it."
"Can't he?" said Peter mildly; "but he asked me a lot of questions about her himself. And I told him how she called me Peter Perky, and all about her saving my life in the wreck."
"What!" interrupted the cousins in a breath; "she did what?"
"Didn't you know?" said Eustace.
"We don't know anything except what that awful cable said," Brenda said in a low, shaky voice.
Between them the twins and Peter told the whole story. Herbert sat at the table, his head buried in his hands. Brenda listened with her back to the speakers, looking away out of the window.
There was a long pause.
"Then," said Herbert huskily at last, "if it hadn't been for Peter, Aunt Dorothy would never have been drowned."