"One day, one of her maids, Nelly, fell off the end of a Gone-Away dock--I forget how--into deep water. She couldn't swim a stroke and was beginning to gulp and go under, but Mrs. Brace-Gideon stood on the end of the dock and shouted: 'Nelly, I forbid you to drown! I forbid it! You wait right there!' "And do you know Nelly didn't drown because she didn't dare to; she managed to keep her head above water somehow until Mrs. Brace-Gideon--_who couldn't swim a stroke either, mind you!_--jumped right into the lake wearing her hat and holding her parasol, in all her heavy clothes and her heavy corsets and her heavy jewelry! It's a wonder she ever came up again, but she did, thank fortune, and clinging to a piling, she reached out her parasol so that Nelly, poor creature, could grasp it and be towed in. Then Mrs. Brace-Gideon, holding on to Nelly with one arm and the piling with the other, began calling for help in the loud, strong operatic voice she had, and everybody heard her and came running. My father said he never forgot Mrs. Brace-Gideon being hoisted out of the lake still wearing her big wide picture hat. In those days, of course, ladies' hats were always skewered on with hatpins." "I wish I'd seen her," Julian said. "What other brave things did she do?" Portia wanted to know. "Well, one night--haven't I told you this? But no, I'm sure I haven't--one night, when she couldn't sleep, she became aware of a sound downstairs, a very small but suspicious sound. It was late--oh, I think two or three o'clock!--so she got up, put on one of the magnificent dressing-gowns she had, and tiptoed out to listen.... Well, sure enough, she heard the sound again, whatever it was like, a sort of careful clinking or chinking, I imagine, and she was convinced it was a robber! "So she crept down the stairs. _Crept!_ For such a commanding woman, she could be very quiet when she needed to.... A light was coming faintly from the drawing room--this very room (or so she said).... At the foot of the stairs she picked up that cast-iron pug-dog doorstop--you know the one?" "_I_ do," Julian said feelingly. "I tripped over it and fell down, hard, the first time I ever came exploring in this house!" "Then you know how solid it is. So Mrs. Brace-Gideon tiptoed to the drawing-room door and peeked in, and _there_, _yes_, there _was_ a man--a _burglar_--kneeling on the floor, with a dark lantern beside him and a pistol in one hand! And the door of the safe was open before him!" "A safe? You mean it? In this very room?" Julian's eyes were shooting sparks. "Well, that's what she told _us_, Julian. But you must remember that Mrs. Brace-Gideon was not what one would call a trusting person; no, she was not. So the safe may very well have been concealed in some other room. However, the rest of the story is absolutely true. Every bit of it." "So she saw this burglar...." Portia prompted breathlessly.