ng of Bob's maxim about
looking at two sides of a question, so she could see no reason for
the strange things he sometimes said, and he was far too reticent
to have explained.

"Well, all I can say is, I wish we had never come," said Nesta for
about the twentieth time. "Nothing is nice, and it will be more
hateful than ever now they feel like that about Peter. We had
better tell mother and father, and ask them to take us away."

"What's that I hear?" said an astonished voice at the door.

The children all jumped and turned round, for there stood their
grandfather. They were speechless with dismay; they could not have
pictured a worse thing happening.

"What did you say, Nesta?" asked Mr. Chase again, in a tone that
made the twins' hearts stand still.

He looked angry, surprised, and very commanding. But how were they
to repeat what they had been saying? Nesta remembered they had been
warned not to speak of Aunt Dorothy before him. Eustace felt it
would be mean and ungenerous to get Herbert into trouble behind his
back. But Peter had no such scruples. Dropping his head into his
arms on the table, he broke out sobbingly,--

"Herbert says it was me drowned Aunt Dorothy."

"What!" exclaimed Mr. Chase incredulously; "he surely never said
such a thing? Explain this to me, Eustace, at once."

His tone was so severe that the boy literally shook. He had never
seen any one really angry in his life before.

"He didn't say quite that," Eustace said with difficulty; "he only
meant it was because of Peter."

"Kindly give me his exact words," Mr. Chase said, still in that
awful voice.

Eustace closed his thin lips tight, with an expression that meant
wild horses would not drag it from him. His grandfather scanned his
face closely, then turned to Nesta.

"As Eustace seems to have lost his tongue, I must ask you to tell
me what Herbert said in exactly his own words."

Nesta glanced furtively at her twin, but she was angry with Herbert
and saw no reason why he should be protected.

"He said," she replied, "if Peter had not been at the other side of
the boat, and Aunt Dorothy had not had to go and find him, she
wouldn't have been drowned. He said we all went away and left
her--"

"How dared he!" Mr. Chase thundered. "I am ashamed that a grandson
of mine should have behaved in such a way. Whatever he thought, he
had no right to say such a thing."

"He--he was most fearfully unhappy," said Eustace nervously.

"That i