“Saw it? I was in it.”
“In the fight?” demanded Nancy.
“We are talking about different things, Nancy. What is it you saw?”
“I saw that terrible old English lady, what’s-her-name, Mrs. Paxton-Steele, beat a boy with her stick! She took him by the arm and beat him well across the back, and called him ‘Low, dastardly coward,’ and he howled like a whipped dog, and when I said ‘Oh, don’t,’ she turned on me and I thought she was going to hit me with her stick, too.”
“That must have been the boy who threw the ball,” cried Billie. “I’m glad some one punished him. What did he look like?”
“How could I tell? He was all dripping wet in a bathing-suit, and his face was turned away.”
In a few words and with very modest allusions concerning her connection with the saving of Timothy Peppercorn, Billie described the accident to Nancy.
“That is the reason why I asked you what the boy looked like, Nancy. I just wanted to see which of all the men in this hotel he was,” Billie added, after she had finished the story.
“Oh, Billie,” cried her friend, putting her arms around Billie’s neck, “you are the bravest, finest girl in the whole world.”
“But it was that nice fat Mr. Duffy who saved us all, child. Go hug him.”