"Humph!" was the old lady's comment; but perhaps she did not feel all the satisfaction that exclamation implied when she saw how down-hearted the girls seemed when she walked with them again along the gravel walk that skirted the waterfront of Colonel Swayne's estate.
The girls' eight-oared shell was out and the crew were practicing. One of the new girls caught an awful crab and the shell came near being swamped.
"Mercy me!" ejaculated Aunt Dora. "Is that the best they can do without you girls to help them?"
This rather amused the twins, despite their sore-heartedness; but their aunt really began to "take up cudgels" for them. She objected to the punishment Gee Gee had meted out to her nieces.
"I didn't like the looks of that four-eyed teacher, anyway," declared the old lady, with some asperity. "I'm going to see about it. Your father would just let you be driven from pillar to post—he's got no spunk. What you Lockwoods need in this town is a woman in the family!"
Dora and Dorothy thought this was only a threat. But Aunt Dora actually appeared at Central High the next morning and obtained an audience with Mr. Sharp, the principal.
Whatever she said to him bore fruit in a quiet investigation on the principal's part into the pros and cons of the canoe bumping that had brought the Lockwood twins to grief. He heard the testimony of eye witnesses of the collision—something that Miss Carrington had not done.
All that he said to the severe teacher will never be known; but Bobby heard him say for one thing:
"Loyalty—even in school athletics—is a very good thing, Miss Carrington. You will admit that, yourself. And these girls are loyal students. I think they have been punished enough, don't you? Besides, I fear the testimony you chanced to hear was prejudiced. This Hester Grimes has been in trouble before for giving untruthful testimony against a fellow-classmate. Am I not right?"
"And very honorably she admitted her fault afterward," Miss Carrington declared.