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Title: Betty at St. Benedick's
A school story for girls
Author: Ethel Talbot
Release Date: July 16, 2023 [eBook #71201]
Language: English
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BETTY AT ST. BENEDICK'S ***
[Frontispiece: A little tumble-down desolate cottage (p. 63).]
BETTY
AT ST. BENEDICK'S
A SCHOOL STORY FOR GIRLS
BY
ETHEL TALBOT
THOMAS NELSON AND SONS, LTD.
LONDON, EDINBURGH, AND NEW YORK
CONTENTS
I. On the Way to School
II. Are You a Daisy?
III. At the Window Table
IV. In the Big Oak Hall
V. The Daisy Mascot
VI. The Guide Cup
VII. The Fairy Piper
VIII. In Witch's Wood
IX. Betty Keeps a Secret
X. Lost!--The Cup!
XI. With Sybil, in the Wood
XII. The Tracking Expedition
XIII. Little Friend of all the World
XIV. The Pioneer Picnic
XV. Betty Shares the Secret
XVI. Everything comes Right!
BETTY AT ST. BENEDICK'S
CHAPTER I
ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL
The whole family had come down to see Betty off.
Dad was there, although Betty felt that really and truly he oughtn't
to spare the time.
The twins were there, because nothing on earth would have kept them
at home.
Even baby was there; though he wasn't to be called "baby" any longer,
Aunt Frances had decided. Aunt Frances was holding his hand now, and
telling him to wave good-bye to Betty.
"Oh, _don't_ trouble him, Auntie!" said Betty in a motherly tone.
"He so very rarely gets the chance to see an engine really _start_!"
"Dear old Bet," said Auntie.
Auntie was a darling. There was no doubt of that. If it hadn't been
that she was such a darling, Betty couldn't possibly have brought
herself to come away. But it had all been arranged so suddenly and
unexpectedly, and almost without asking her at all.
"You see, old lady," Dad had said only a fortnight ago, speaking one
evening a few days after Auntie's arrival, in a voice which
tried--though it couldn't quite succeed--to be in an ordinary,
everyday tone; "you see, you have looked after all of us so long,
Auntie says, that I've quite forgotten that it's I who ought to be
looking after _you_!"
"Oh, Dad!" Betty had said, staring.
Auntie hadn't said it in Dad's way. She had come along that evening
after Betty was in bed. She had sat on the edge too, and had hugged
Betty just the same way that Betty hugged Jan, the twin. "Bet, pet,"
said Auntie, "you see, you've got to go for Daddy's sake!"
"Oh, Auntie!" Betty had said again, but in a different tone of voice.
"It worries him to see you growing up like this," said Auntie. "We
don't want to have a Betty with white hair and worrying wrinkles
before she's twenty. And besides, I'm home now from India; and Dad
and I used to get on well enough when we were children, you know.
So----"
So it was all arranged. That was only a fortnight ago, and now they
were all down seeing her off.
"St. Benedick's, _Woodhurst_," was written on her red labels. Betty
was really going to school.
"If the train's late in starting I really and truly think that, Dad,
you oughtn't to stay," said Betty, leaning out.
But Dad stayed. They all of them stayed. They all of them waved and
waved and waved when the train started off as though they would
never, never stop waving.
"I'm goin' on wavin'," shouted Jack, the twin, running along beside
the moving train, "till you come back!"
"Go straight back to Auntie," said Betty in a very severe tone. She
was dreadfully sorry that her last words had to be so
strict-sounding; but--suppose he got under the wheels! And there was
Auntie, already fully occupied with holding on to Jan and baby. And
Dad was just turning to race up the station stairs--oh yes, Betty was
glad to see that. She left the window as the train entered the
tunnel and sat down.
It was then that desolation seized her.
Never, never, never--so far back as she remembered--had she felt so
alone before! Even at night-time Jan's small bed was tucked close to
her own, and at night-time Betty was always so tired that she fell
fast asleep and so couldn't possibly feel solitary.
But now----
"Oh, why ever did I come?" suddenly said Betty. "Oh, why ever did I
think I'd like it? Oh dear, oh, isn't it dreadful of me! Oh, I wish
I could turn round and go back. I don't believe that I told Auntie
about those early summer woollies of Jan's. And suppose she catches
cold. And Dad simply hates every kind of cocoa except Rowntree's,
and I've never told her _that_; and we're just at the end of the tin.
_Oh!_"
Quite suddenly Betty began to cry.
"Oh dear," she sobbed. "Oh, I do, _do_ hope they're not crying too!"
It was the thought of their possible tears that made her forget to
shed any more of her own. Her fingers groping for a handkerchief
came across a stubby pencil with which she had been drawing pictures
for baby. In her case there was sure to be paper; she would write
them all a letter. Betty was smiling as she began "Dear Everybody"
at the top of the page, for she could almost see the twins racing to
the postman's ring, and could almost hear their shouts. She felt at
that moment almost as much back at home as though she was really
there.
"Dear Everybody..." began Betty.
The letter took a long time; it took away all the marks of tears,
too, from Betty's face. By the time the junction was reached, and
the train came to a full stop, she was looking quite cheery and eager
again.
"No, I'm not getting out. I was wondering, though, if I could post
this letter," she began to a passing porter, just as two Benedick
girls came along.
"Letter, eh? We'll do it for you!" said one of them. "See, there's
the red pillar. No, no. Don't fuss; there's plenty of time. New
girl, are you? Left something special at home?" The stranger took
the envelope from Betty's hand.
Betty had known that they were Benedick girls from the colour of
their labels. They must be very high in the school, she decided, as
she watched the pair of them, after depositing their traps on the
seat opposite to her own, walk in leisurely fashion to the station
post-box and return in equally leisurely fashion. She herself would
have been all wings and flying fingers; there was no "fuss," as they
had called it, about them. Almost instinctively she pulled herself
together a little and held herself in imitation of their bearing.
But she couldn't refrain from jumping from her seat to reopen the
carriage door for them as they returned.
"Oh, thank you so much. Now they'll get it at home. Isn't there
anything I can do for _you_?" She tugged at the door.
"Easy does it." The handle was taken from her grasp. "Sit back,
kiddy; we can't get in."
The speaker had a very nice voice; there was no mistake about that.
So nice a voice indeed, and so very kind and steady a smile, that
Betty didn't mind in the very least being called "kiddy" by a
stranger, though never in her life had the term been addressed to her
before. Never perhaps in her life, either, had such a tone been
addressed to her. Half-amused, half-tolerant, but clearly the tone
of her-who-must-be-obeyed. Betty sat back instantly.
She sat back and listened, for the strangers began to talk. They
were evidently friends; so much was certain. It seemed certain, too,
that they had only just met after--as Betty decided to herself--their
holidays at home. They evidently didn't mind her listening either,
for their tones, quiet and level as they were, did not seem in the
least lowered. They were seated exactly opposite, too, and the elder
of the two--the girl who had taken Betty's letter and who had called
her "kiddy"--caught sight once or twice of the listening look in
Betty's eyes and half-smiled at her.
Betty felt relieved and listened on.
But she felt bewildered too, because they seemed to be talking of
things about which she herself had no knowledge at all. Betty had
known that she would be ignorant at school compared to other girls
there; but she had, at least, so she told herself, expected to
understand the others' language.
"I wonder if we shall manage another patrol this term," said the
elder.
"'Patrol'?" thought Betty questioningly.
"If so, we shall be a full company. And there will be still more
competition for the Cup," returned her friend. "You Daisies will
have to work for it if you're to hold it next year too."
This indeed was Greek. Betty suddenly felt a qualm of home-sickness
sweep over her. Where would she be in a school where girls talked
understandingly of matters of which she had never heard? Perhaps her
feelings were shown by her expression of face, for her first friend
leaned suddenly forward with a quick impulsive movement.
"Are you interested in Guides?"
"Guides?" Betty shook her head.
"You haven't heard of them?" There was no scorn in the speaker's
voice at all, though she certainly did seem surprised. "Why, then,
what a good thing you've decided to come to Benedick's! You'll love
it. We're all Guides there. What is your name?"
"Betty Carlyle," said Betty rather shyly.
She had hardly ever felt shy before. Generally at home, when there
were visitors--and that was very seldom--she was so busy helping the
little ones not to be shy that she quite forgot to be shy herself.
Now, however, she seemed suddenly to find herself in an altogether
new world. If it had not been for the kind look in the blue eyes
which were looking into her own, Betty would have felt shyer. But
the eyes were very kind.
"Ask the kiddy her age, too, Sybil?" said the second occupant of the
carriage. "She's above Brownie age, I think."
"I'm thirteen," said Betty, not understanding the allusion in the
least.
She felt rather shy of the second girl too, and she was relieved when
Sybil took up the conversation. "Any age is Guide age," said she
with a jolly look, "as you'll soon decide. I only wish I could fit
you into the Daisies; but I'm afraid we're a tight pack." Then she
turned and, without looking at Betty again, began to speak to her
companion about matters which seemed "just as Greeky," as Betty
decided, "as before."
But in spite of the "Greekiness" of things Betty's heart was
beginning to feel quite light. There was an excited sparkle in her
eyes as she sat back against the cushions.
For Sybil had said that Guides were jolly. And Sybil had said that
she would make a good Guide, and love it. And Sybil had said that
she wished she could fit Betty "into the Daisies!" Betty had no
glimmer of an idea what Guides, or patrols, or "Daisies" were; but
she was quite certain of one thing, that if Sybil was to be a part of
Benedick's, then, even if Betty herself was shy and stupid at first,
she would be sure to grow to love it, because Sybil had said that she
would.
CHAPTER II
ARE YOU A DAISY?
Betty was upstairs in the dormitory, battling with a choky feeling
that came and went just because of the strangeness of it all. But
not altogether an uncomfortable feeling, perhaps, because it was
something the same as feelings she had experienced once or twice
before when on her way to parties, which, of course, she would be
sure, when once she got there, to enjoy! Generally at such
times--which had happened very seldom--she had had the twins with
her; and there had been always something to do for them on arrival
which had made her forget her own shyness. For the choky feeling was
shyness, she decided.
She hadn't felt shy with the older girls in the train, not after
Sybil had smiled at her. She had imagined then that everything would
be plain-sailing. When the train had slowed down, too, at Woodhurst
Station, the two girls had helped Betty out with her luggage, and
she--who had been Dad's right-hand man during the journey to the sea
with the twins and baby last summer--had wondered if they remembered
that she had told them she was aged thirteen! But after that--well,
Sybil with her companion had seemed to melt suddenly into space after
telling the new girl kindly to "wait there for Miss Drury," and Betty
had unexpectedly found herself alone again, feeling rather less than
thirteen in courage as she seemed suddenly to become encircled by a
perfect whirlpool of white panama hats, long brown legs, and dark
blue suits.
They were Benedick girls, of course, for they all carried suit-cases
with labels. They wore the Benedick hat-band, too, on their hats,
and at first each one of them, to Betty's uninitiated eye, looked
identically the same as every other. She noticed presently, however,
that although they all seemed garbed exactly alike, some of them wore
pigtails and some of them had bobbed heads; that a few of them seemed
to glance at her in a friendly fashion too, while others were too
busy to notice her at all. And she was beginning, rather
despairingly, to try to notice any other distinguishing features
there might be, when suddenly, from among the chattering multitude,
there emerged "one of the bobbed heads," as Betty called the
individual to herself, and came across.
"How awfully clever of you," said the newcomer, who seemed about
Betty's own age, with a smile that showed a dimple, "to stand here
under the clock straight away. Miss Drury's down the train looking
for new girls. They never guess, of course, where to go. But
perhaps you've had a sister, or an aunt, or a mother?"
The whole sentence was rather of a mystifying order, but Betty didn't
care for that. She pinned all her hopes on the smile that showed the
dimple, and smiled back.
"I didn't know I _was_ under the clock," she said, glancing up at the
station clock above her head. "But a girl--Sybil was her name--told
me to stand here, and then she went. Is Miss Drury one of the
teachers?"
"A _mistress_. Yes, rather," the friendly girl nodded. "If you know
Sybil, of course you're all right. I only thought you might be shy
and that I'd speak to you before Miss Drury came. Here she is."
Betty's new acquaintance turned. "I always walk up with Phyllis,"
she remarked; "we've booked the walk every term from the station.
But I'm sure to see you later. I'm Gerry. Hope you're a Daisy!" she
added, calling over her shoulder in a jolly voice as she was lost in
the crowd.
Quite lost; one of a medley from which Betty would have found it
almost as difficult to find her as to discover a needle in hay. "And
she's a Daisy too!" she found herself thinking. "How jolly they
seem. I should so much like to be one too--whatever they are!"
There wasn't much time, though, for conjecture upon this point; the
sudden arrival of the mistress in charge made that plain. "Only one
new girl this term. Her boxes are here, but she--" she was beginning
in rather a puzzled voice. "Hesther, Louise, Gladys, have any of
you--? Oh, here she is!" Her eyes fell with evident approval upon
the figure of Betty, standing stiff as any grenadier, under the clock.
"How very sensible of you to follow the others," remarked she in a
downright voice, "and to come straight here. So few of the new girls
do, and the train is such a long one. Now fall in, please." Miss
Drury's tone was breezy and her look travelled quickly from Betty to
the whirlpool which, almost like magic, seemed to sort itself into
instantaneous couples at the sound of her command.
"Yes, we're all here now, I think. Phyllis and Gerry will lead off.
But wait outside the station, please, for a moment as usual, until I
give the word to start up the hill. There should be twenty-six of
you here, and I must make sure." Then, as she brought up the rear
herself, Miss Drury--ignoring fervent requests from three evident
admirers--turned again in Betty's direction and threw her a friendly
glance.
"Betty Carlyle? Yes, come along. No, Marie and Brenda, will you
make the last couple, please; I have only two sides, as you know, and
Betty has no partner. Clare--yes, you may walk with me too."
Betty found herself, therefore, making a threesome, stepping out with
as steady a stride as she could manage, and feeling a distinct twinge
of awe in her heart. For Miss Drury, on whose right side she walked,
seemed to the new girl as much unlike a "teacher" as any one could
possibly be. The books at home were rather old-fashioned certainly,
and they had generally depicted the mistresses of schools as being
gaunt ladies in specs and mittens. Miss Drury, however, was as
unlike the "specs-and-mittens" type as any one could possibly be.
She reminded Betty of the golf-playing ladies on the links at the
seaside last year from whose furious hitting she had protected the
ubiquitous twins, who had been consumed with a mania to stray on the
greens hunting for "lost balls." For Miss Drury wore brogues and a
sports coat; she looked, Betty found herself thinking, "like the
jolly older sister of one of the girls, instead of anybody teachery."
The very words of her conversation with Clare, who walked on the
mistress's left hand, sounded altogether unschooly, Betty thought.
"Well, Clare, it certainly was rather a risk, perhaps, to go camping
in the Easter holidays; but the weather forecast was so good that I
decided to take advantage of it. If we are to have a camp this
term----"
"Oh, Miss _Drury_!"
Clare was evidently listening feverishly while the mistress
expatiated fervently on the interests and excitements of an Easter
camp when the winds had been so strong that their tent was blown
sky-high during the process of being pitched by an inexperienced
camper; when the tent canvas had apparently shrunk dreadfully after
an April deluge; and when a tent pole had cracked at midnight with
direful consequences to all concerned. "But all I can say is,"
finished up the mistress, "that I never gained such good experience
at first hand in my life. The more you pay for experience the more
good you get from it." Then, in the quick direct and very kindly way
which Betty had already realized as characteristic, Miss Drury turned
to speak to the new girl at her side.
"Are you a Guide?" she asked kindly. "No? Well, I am very glad, for
your sake then, that you have come to St. Benedick's just when you
have. Thirteen, are you not? Quite a junior. You have plenty of
time to work up for your badges, you know."
"I hope you'll be a Cowslip," put in Clare, smiling across from Miss
Drury's other side. "Oh, Miss Drury, I do hope--" The talk began
again.
But Betty had already decided that, if she had anything to do with
the matter, she would be a Daisy rather than any other flower of the
field! She was still firmly of the same opinion when the lodge gate
was reached and the school came in sight.
Not a large house, but an old one. Standing, as it did, in
well-wooded grounds, it looked still almost as it must have looked
long ago--an unpretentious old family mansion, which had not been
built for school purposes, but whose quiet atmosphere of age and
dignity had yet changed wonderfully little since the coming of the
Benedick girls some ten years back.
From the lodge gate through which the crocodile of girls entered the
old house could be seen at once, with its mullioned windows and
twisted chimneys, with its creepers which would be red-golden in the
autumn but which were now glad-green. It was lit up with the late
afternoon sun, and seemed, against its background of dark whispering
trees, as though smiling kindly at the returning girls. The house
was faced with green lawns, as well and trimly kept as they had ever
been before the school had taken possession there. Its gardens,
through which the big drive wound up to the great main door, were
old-world gardens still. Beds of old-fashioned roses, tiled paths,
clipped yew trees, an ancient sundial--the impression of the whole
was a quiet one. Rooks cawed from the tall old elms behind the
house; the trees in the grounds through which the girls walked seemed
old and full of years.
"Is _that_ St. Benedick's?" asked Betty, wondering.
For somehow, though she couldn't exactly have explained her feelings
on the matter, though she didn't perhaps realize that she had had as
yet any ideas as to what the school buildings would be like, now she
knew that she had expected something far more modern and
ordinary--nothing exactly beautiful like this. And yet there was a
"something" in the bearing of all the girls--a "something" she had
noticed more in the two seniors of the train, perhaps, than in the
juniors, and most of all in Sybil--a "something" which was akin to
the feeling that this old building gave.
"No fuss," it seemed to say as it stood there beautiful as though
from unhurried age. "Easy does it." Almost the first words she had
heard Sybil utter had been just those. So many years it had taken
for the beauty of the old house to grow. The age of hurry-scurry had
never had a part in the making of this old mansion. It seemed to
stand with gentle, kindly dignity, holding its memories, cherishing
them as some treasure among the trees, which perhaps held older
memories still.
Betty felt a throb at her heart. It was _wonderful_ to come to
school in a house like this. Her eyes were still fixed on the old
building, lit up with the afternoon sun, as Miss Drury spoke.
"Yes," her voice was quiet and seemed to match with the scene, as
though she, too, saw what Betty saw, and understood, for all her talk
of camping and for all the modern breeziness of her manner. "This is
St. Benedick's. Miss Carey likes to keep the grounds just as they
were. The playing-fields are right away from the house, though we
use the grounds, of course, for Guide practices."
The procession of girls had wound by this time in orderly fashion
along the drive, between the old-world garden lawns and beds, and
through the great doors which seemed--so Betty thought--glad to open
to them. Then, as she followed on herself, the very last of the
line, she forgot the first impressions that the old house had given
her. For Miss Drury was addressing an individual in a starched cap
and apron who stood at the foot of the wide stairway.
"The only new girl; Betty Carlyle, Nurse. I will hand her over to
you while the others go straight to the cloakrooms."
Betty found herself, therefore, ascending the stairway step by step
with a sudden longing for a twin on either side. The sense of
dignity and mystery that the first sight of the old house had given
her was gone now. There were echoing sounds of voices and laughter,
greetings and meetings down below, in which she had no share.
"Your room is number three, and you'll share it with Mona and
Geraldine and Irene," Nurse was remarking in a tone which seemed as
starchy as her uniform. "And so I trust you are not an untidy girl."
Three minutes afterwards Betty, having tiptoed along passages which
seemed scented both with the old-fashioned flowers whose perfumes
were wafted through the widely-opened windows and also with nowadays
beeswax and turpentine, found herself seated inside a cubicle that
was to be "all her own."
It was then that the shyness came back.
If only she'd had Jan's frock to change, or Jack's bootlace to
unknot! Of course she knew that school was really going to be
lovely--her first acquaintance with Sybil, and Gerry, Miss Drury,
and, yes, even with the old house itself, had assured her of that;
but if only there had been somebody there who needed her as they all
had needed her at home!
CHAPTER III
AT THE WINDOW TABLE
"I just half-guessed you'd be in our room," said Gerry. "That was
why I couldn't help speaking to you in the station."
She had dimpled herself into Betty's cubicle, and had perched
herself, still dimpling, on the side of Betty's bed. Her hat had
been left downstairs, and a mass of red-to-golden hair seemed almost
to glitter as she sat there. To Betty's admiring eyes she seemed a
glittery sort of person altogether.
"When I saw you standing under the clock," continued Gerry, as the
dimple came and went, "I said, 'That's _her_!'" She broke off
suddenly--not to correct her grammatical lapse, but to start in
surprise at the sound of a louder voice than her own.
"_Geraldine!_" said the outraged voice.
"Oh!" cried Gerry with an apologetic squeak.
She rose from the white coverlet as she squeaked, and was attempting
to remove certain creases as Nurse drew back the curtain.
"In another girl's cubicle, and before half an hour of the term has
passed, Geraldine!" remarked the starched and stately dignitary. "I
had two thoughts about putting a new girl in here at all; for with
you so forgetful and all, how's she to learn the rules? Rumpling the
covers--!" Nurse bent down and smoothed the coverlet herself; "and
she younger than you, and needing teaching!"
[Illustration: "I just half-guessed you'd be in our room."]
Nurse's tone was majestic in its intonation, and a subdued voice came
in reply from the other end of the room where Gerry had fled to her
own domain.
"Nurse, I honestly forgot. I'll really remember. In three weeks,
you know, one can forget such lots of things!"
But Nurse replied not at all, and apparently making no allowance for
this extenuating circumstance, turned to Betty instead. "You're
ready now? Well, Geraldine may take you downstairs when the tea-gong
rings. You will see Miss Carey afterwards; but first of all she
wishes you to have your tea."
Nurse withdrew, and the closing of the door behind her seemed to
serve to loosen the tongue of Gerry, who burst into a flood of
conversation without delay.
"I _did_ forget. Honest Injun, I did. We're not allowed in each
other's cubicles without permission, though we may have the curtains
drawn back. Nurse is most awfully strict; but she's not really so
strict as she seems. For one thing," Gerry sighed, "she might have
lost me a dormitory mark, but she didn't. I'd like to have seen
Mona's and Irene's faces if I'd lost one. We're all Daisies, you
see, and----"
The speaker broke off as the sound of a loud but very
melodiously-toned gong boomed somewhere from the regions below.
Tea-time; there was no doubt of that; and the new girl was thankful
of Geraldine's presence at her side as the pair made their way down
the wide and shallow stair.
She was still more thankful that she was not alone when they had
reached the bottom, for their progress was held up there on the
lowest step as the school filed its way dining-room wards. Along the
corridor, in a single line, without hurry and without words,
came--first of all--the older girls, then the junior girls behind.
Gerry waited till they had filed past, and then took her own place at
the end with Betty beside her. It felt wonderful to Betty to take
her place, too, by right in the procession; there were thirty-three
of them altogether, counting Gerry and herself, for she had numbered
every one while they were passing. There would have been only
thirty-two girls at St. Benedick's if _she_ were not there, she told
herself; but she was here, and so there were thirty-_three_! The
delicious thought made her gulp with pride.
She forgot the pride, though, for shyness again, just for a little
while, when the dining-room door was reached. At home meals were
generally eaten in a basement room, to save trouble for the general
servant whose duties were so never-ending. Here the very idea of a
meal in such a lovely room made Betty gasp with shyness at first, and
then realize suddenly how hungry she was!
The dining-room ceiling overhead was oak-beamed; the walls were
panelled in dark oak too; the mullioned windows which lined one side
of the wall were all thrown widely open, and the scent of stocks and
pinks seemed to fill the room.
A big bowl of pinks, too, stood in the middle of each of the three
tables, one of which--of circular shape--was smaller than the others.
This round table was placed in the very centre of the room, and was
flanked on either side by a longer and narrower one. Betty, standing
in the doorway, saw six senior girls take their places at the round
table, while a line of junior girls, each evidently taking her own
seat by right, advanced to each of the narrow tables in quiet file.
"Geraldine, please take Betty Carlyle to the window table with you,"
came the voice of a mistress standing at the door.
It was all so quiet and orderly, and yet it didn't feel "ruley."
Every girl, as Betty took her place at the corner of her table,
seemed cheerily smiling at her neighbour as though thoroughly
contented with her lot. The new girl felt contented too, but her
feeling of contentment changed suddenly to one of surprise when,
after listening to the words of the Grace pronounced by the mistress
in charge, every tongue seemed suddenly unloosed all round her, and
the room began to buzz and hum with animated conversation.
"Well, as I was just beginning to tell you when the gong sounded,
we--" burst out somebody sitting close by and speaking to her table
neighbour.
"The day Paul broke his ankle, I can tell _you_, First Aid came in
useful," pronounced somebody else with enthusiasm.
"I started at nine, and I hardly had _any_ lunch," came a ravenous
voice.
Everybody seemed to have something to say except Betty, and she
didn't need to talk to Gerry at her side; for Gerry, evidently keen
to make her companion feel at home, burst into a glib and speedy
description of their immediate surroundings.
"That's Mona opposite to you. She sleeps in our room. She's talking
to Molly now, but I'll make her look presently. We don't talk across
tables, you know.
"Isn't it nice that you're a 'window-table' girl! It's much the
nicest table, _we_ say, though the 'wallflower-table' girls (that's
what we call the girls at the wall table) say they can see far
farther over the garden than we can. All the same we sometimes get
bees flying right in, and once a butterfly too." Gerry stopped for
breath.
"I love this table," said Betty shyly.
"So do I. That's Joan Struthers taking the head to-night. She's a
prefect. You can tell them--if they _need_ telling--because their
hair's turned up. Even if it's been bobbed, it has to grow _then_!
There's seven prefects, but only six places are ever laid at the
prefects' table, you see, because one of them always heads a table.
Miss Stewart's at the wallflower table this week; but she will be at
this table next week--in fair turns, you see--and the wallflower
girls will get a prefect." Gerry took a mouthful of scrambled eggs.
Betty took a mouthful, too, and gazed across at the middle table.
Then suddenly she flushed with pride and pleasure as a friendly smile
met her inquiring look. For Sybil was seated there--Sybil of the
train journey. In all the excitements Betty had almost forgotten
her, but it seemed that the older girl had not forgotten Betty. How
quiet and dignified she looked, Betty thought, as she sat there with
a golden braid of hair wound in a coronet round her head.
"There--there's the girl who told me to stand under the clock," she
whispered, touching Geraldine's arm.
Gerry nodded. "That's Sybil. She's the head of our patrol. She's
head girl too this term of the school. Our patrol is the Daisies.
I'm in it; and Mona and Irene as well. We've got four patrols at
school, you know; there are the Buttercups and the Cowslips and the
Foxgloves as well as us. I don't see how you can possibly be in our
bedroom without being a Daisy; but, you see--" Gerry's tone broke
off in rather a worried note.
"Oh, I do hope--" began Betty feverishly, just as silence fell
suddenly upon the room as Miss Stewart tapped on the table.
"Girls, go straight to the Oak Room, as you always do on the first
day. Miss Carey is ready for you now."
Perhaps the Oak Room had been used in the early days as a banqueting
hall, for a musicians' gallery ran round the four walls overhead.
Perhaps stately family festivals, banquets, and ceremonial feasts had
taken place here in years gone by. But for all that, the old
pictures still hanging on the walls seemed to look down tolerantly on
the girls of to-day as they entered.
But perhaps, too, it was the sight of them all--young, gay,
simple-hearted, and with life stretching so invitingly before
them--standing in the room that held so many echoes of the past,
which made the headmistress when she entered pause for a moment and
look down at them quietly before she spoke.
Scarcely an opening speech could her words be called, for her words
were, as usual, few. But even before Miss Carey had opened her lips
some of the waiting girls had felt themselves under the influence of
what she had come to say.
Slight and straight she stood there; somehow, in her quiet and gentle
but forceful dignity, she seemed, as always, with her understanding
appreciation of the beauty of things past, and with her power to see
beauty in things present, to be a link between the house which had
belonged to yesterday and the girls of to-day. "_Festina lente._"
(It was the school motto that she took as her text--"Hasten slowly.")
She spoke of the old house which sheltered them. "We could not have
a happier setting for a school with our motto," said Miss Carey.
"Every day that we spend here should teach us more of what our motto
means. Years and years have passed as it has stood here, and its
beauty has grown. '_Festina lente_' seems to me to have been its
motto too. No fuss; no undue haste; until now, in the full beauty of
its age, it has given us shelter, and we can learn here the lesson
which is so difficult to learn in the busy world of to-day.
"Outside, in life, there is so much hurry-scurry nowadays. You, who
are one with the outside life, and must take your share in it later,
are spending certain years here to fit you for your life outside.
And these years should be for you later on, I like to think, a
treasure which, in the storm and stress that life must bring to each
of us, no one can take from you. Quiet memories will be yours of a
time when--helped perhaps more than you realize now by the atmosphere
and influence of this house itself--you, each one, laid up a store of
strength for later days.
"And because, here at St. Benedick's, we 'study to be quiet,' you
will not be the less fitted, I think, when you leave for the world
outside, if you go out remembering that in quietness and in
confidence is your greatest strength. No, all I have to say to you
at the opening of this term can be summed up again, I think, in our
motto: _Festina lente_ (Hasten slowly); for nothing in life is worth
having that can be gained by snatching. Our motto means much, and it
may grow to mean more and more through life to each one of you if you
will remember it. Hasten slowly; and 'Patience, then, will have her
perfect work.'"
CHAPTER IV
IN THE BIG OAK HALL
"Attention! Patrols, form lines! Right turn! Lead out!"
Suddenly, at the close of the little speech, the orders had come.
Just as Betty was wondering why it was that Miss Carey's words--even
although she could understand very little of their meaning--had yet
left a queer restful sort of feeling in her excited mind, the
headmistress had paused, her tone had changed, and the orders had
been uttered in quiet but clear and decisive tones.
And in response every girl in the room had drawn herself up. Then,
in amazement, Betty had watched as four of the prefects had stood out
from the rest, and as the other girls, each evidently understanding
the meaning of the orders, had quietly taken a place in one of the
four lines. Betty, following Geraldine's movements with her eyes,
had noticed that her late companion now stood quietly at the end of a
row of juniors which seemed to be under the charge of Sybil, the head
girl. Six other juniors stood there with her, one of whom Betty
recognized as Mona, though the rest were as yet unknown. While she
was wondering whether she, too, had a place in the ranks, the second
order had come from the lips of the headmistress, and quietly, in
orderly fashion, the four prefects had led their patrols from the
room.
On the floor of the big Oak Hall Betty found herself alone; but as
she turned, wondering whether to follow the rest, the new girl found
the headmistress at her side.
"You are Betty Carlyle, my dear?"
[Illustration: "You are Betty Carlyle, my dear?"]
It was quite impossible to be afraid of Miss Carey. Betty suddenly
thought, as she looked up and met the kind look in the headmistress's
eyes, of deep pools of blue water--deep, very deep.
But it was depths of feeling, hidden deeper still but mirrored in the
eyes, which unconsciously she had noticed. Buried there were the
signs of sorrows bravely borne, but hidden now; buried deep were all
the troubles that life had brought her. But buried deep, too, were
reserves of strength wrought from triumph over trial; reserves of
sympathy gained after sorrows bravely borne. Betty did not
understand this. She only somehow felt that the lines on the face
which looked kindly and keenly into her own had "fallen in pleasant
places"; that the eyes seemed as true as they were blue; and that the
smile on the quiet lips was the sweetest smile that she had ever seen.
"Yes," she whispered.
"And you think you will be happy here, my dear?"
"Yes, only--" Betty's voice quivered a little. For the "only" meant
a great deal just then. School, wonderful though it was, seemed to
hold so many mysteries still. The other girls seemed still beings
apart. Just as she stood alone in the big Oak Hall now she felt
alone somehow. And at home it had been so different.
"Only you do not feel in touch with our ways yet?" The voice had
seemed as kind as the eyes. "To-morrow, by this time, you will feel
differently, I am quite sure. And then--" Miss Carey had crossed
the room while she spoke, while Betty walked at her side. Together
they had reached the corridor again. "And then you may come to me at
this time," said the headmistress, "and tell me if what I say now has
not come true. Now can you find your way up to your dormitory alone?
Nurse is up there waiting for you, I know."
Very few words; but Betty suddenly felt different. It had needed
just that to settle her, she decided. Even although the girls seemed
sometimes to speak a different language from her own, to have ways
quite different from any she had known, yet soon they would be her
ways too. She went upstairs on flying wings.
Flying wings, however, met with a poor reception from Nurse, the
disciplinarian of the dormitories. Order and method were the burden
of her speech. Betty, during the half-hour which preceded the
arrival upstairs of her dormitory companions, underwent an
introductory training in dormitory behaviour.
"Who packed your box for you? You yourself? You'll pack it
differently to go home with! See these creases? Fine work wasted,
that's what _that_ is! Down to the laundry these go to-night for
some one else to iron. And that's poor thanks to the one who spent
time in doing the work before!"
Betty found herself flushing, half with surprise and half with shame.
"Now this chest of drawers is your own, of course; but each girl
keeps her linen in the top long drawer, and her blouses--" On wound
the lesson while the new girl stood submissively by. "The right-hand
small drawer you may keep for what you like. Your handkerchiefs and
gloves go into the left-hand small drawer."
Nurse was by this time locking the box.
"They're in, Nurse. Everything is. It's finished," replied Betty,
longing for praise from this stern critic.
"'In,' you say? Let me see. Now why waste time by saving it to do
nothing in? That's what you've done. Hurry-scurried over the
business and don't know where your things are. Tell me without
looking inside now, which end of the drawer did you put your Sunday
gloves?"
"I--" Betty stood still, unable to remember.
"You don't know. I don't blame you to-day. But you'll arrange this
differently, I hope, before I've done with you. We've all got the
same amount of time--all the time there is! Some of you think that
if you hurry-scurry over what you've got to do, that you save some of
it for something else. They've generally wasted it instead, as they
find out! Now there's ten minutes of the half-hour left before the
rest come up, so you can take your things out of this drawer and lay
them in again. 'A place for everything, and everything in its
place,' may be an old-fashioned proverb in some places," finished up
Nurse, "but not at St. Benedick's. And neither is the tale of the
'Hare and Tortoise.' It comes true _here_ every day!"
There was much wisdom in Nurse's words. In her own characteristic
way she was voicing, as Betty somehow realized, the spirit that lay
under the school motto. The new girl slowly and methodically did as
she was told while Nurse stood looking on. Anyhow, so she told
herself, she was already learning one way of being like the rest of
the girls!
For how different the drawers looked from those in her bedroom chest
at home. A muddled jumble of her own things and Jill's had generally
to be stirred round about before an odd glove, or a possible
bootlace, or a cleaner handkerchief could be found. Even while
Nurse's first words of commendation were sounding in Betty's ears,
even although she was beginning to feel herself more like the rest,
Betty's heart gave a terrible thump of longing for home.
It was at that juncture that "the rest" came upstairs to bed--each of
the two dormitory companions with whom she had not as yet made
friends, evidently as keen to know Betty as Geraldine had been.
"Gerry's just behind. She stopped for something. You're Betty
Carlyle, aren't you? Rene and I have been longing to talk to you."
Thus Mona in a breathless torrent. "I tried to smile across at tea,
because we don't talk over the table; only you weren't looking. And
then came Miss Carey's speech, of course, and then came the Guide
meeting, and so--" The curtains of Mona's cubicle had been drawn
right back, and she was waving a hair-brush while Rene, although it
was evidently difficult for her to get a word in edgeways, smiled and
nodded in friendly fashion, as though in perfect agreement with her
friend's sentiments.
Rene was small and dark; Mona was tall, and owned a corn-coloured
pigtail. They were both jolly looking, Betty thought; though perhaps
not quite so specially jolly as Geraldine. The latter entered the
bedroom three minutes after the other pair, panting as she came.
"I was dreadfully afraid I'd be late. I waited to ask Sybil
something after Guides. You see----"
"'Guides'?" It was the second time the word had been used. So the
girls had been "Guiding," had they, during the half-hour which Betty
had spent unpacking!
"Guiding! Rather." Rene and Mona took up the word and smiled.
"Gerry says you're not one. She was telling Sybil. Sybil said she
knew already, and she said, too, that it's a dreadful pity we can't
fit you into the Daisies. But, of course, we can't _possibly_,
because--" Mona stopped short and shook her hair out of its pigtail,
while Rene took up the tale.
"Nor into the Foxgloves either, can they? They're as full as us.
And the Buttercups too. Cowslips could have taken you in last term;
but Bunty's here now. She came last half-term, and as she'd been a
Guide before, she went straight in."
"_Oh!_" cried Betty disappointedly. She knew suddenly how very much
she had wanted to be a Daisy, if only because then she would
definitely belong to something which held Sybil and Gerry too. She
looked across at Gerry, who hadn't contributed one word yet to the
conversation, but who was labouring solidly with her mop of hair.
There was rather an excited look in her eyes, however, as they met
Betty's pair of disappointed ones. "I _did_ so hope--" began Betty
quaveringly.
"There's eight girls in the Daisies, you see, already," said Mona
informatively. "And there's eight in each of the other patrols,
because this term there's thirty-three at school; and four eights
make thirty-two. Of course, you're an extra, counting that way.
Sybil said that if there'd been more new girls we might have had
another patrol; but with only _you_----!"
Mona was well-meaning if tactless; she did not guess that Betty felt
a gulp in her throat at the words.
"Not, of course, that you could exactly be in _any_ patrol _yet_,"
went on Mona in a would-be comforting tone, "because you don't know
_anything_! Not the Guide law, do you? Nor the promises? Nor the
Union Jack? Nor even knots? So----"
Betty's face grew longer and longer. She seemed to be going farther
and farther into loneliness and insignificance at each mention of
these qualifications, none of which she possessed. She didn't know
_anything_, she agreed mentally, that these girls did. If only Gerry
would speak up for her it would have been some comfort, but Gerry
still steadily brushed at her hair. Betty's heart gave a leap of
hope, however, as Rene, comb suspended, gave a sudden excited cry.
"I tell you what Sybil might let you do!"
"_What?_" inquired Betty breathlessly.
"There's a thing you could be! It's in the Guiding Book. You don't
know anything, you see, like Mona says. But you might be a Lone
Guide, I believe."
A big tear, the existence of which she had been hitherto unaware of,
suddenly half-blinded one of Betty's eyes. For she didn't want, she
told herself, to be any more "alone" than she felt already. She
didn't know what Guiding was, one bit; but she felt quite sure that
she didn't want to be a Lone one! The very sound of the word made
her feel so dreadfully home-sick that she couldn't believe Miss
Carey's promise to her _could_ come true, and that this time
to-morrow she would be feeling like one of the rest. As she turned
to look in the glass and to wink away the tear, there came a tap at
the door, and Gerry, springing suddenly forward, gave a squeak of joy.
"_There!_" said Gerry, throwing a dimply look at Betty. "I knew
Sybil would manage it. I _knew_ she'd come!"
CHAPTER V
THE DAISY MASCOT
It was Sybil's face that looked in at the door. She was smiling, and
her eyes were bright. "May I come in?" she said.
"_Sybil!_" arose a chorus of surprise, and Betty realized at once
from the sound of amazement in the tones of Rene and Mona that this
apparition was as unexpected to them as to her. A dormitory visit
from the head girl must evidently be considered in the light of a
kind of miracle. Their brushes hung suspended in mid-air; they tore
back the curtains of their cubicles feverishly for a better view;
their eyes and mouths were open. Only Gerry, still dimpling secretly
to herself, took no part in the squeaks and squeals of wonder.
Sybil took no notice of them either. Coming in, she closed the door
softly, and stood just inside. "I have Miss Carey's leave to come,"
she said quietly; "and Nurse knows too. Now which--" she stopped
short and looked round the room--"is Betty Carlyle's cubicle?"
"This!" said Gerry in a triumphant voice, pointing with her brush,
and speaking in a tone of suppressed ecstasy.
In another moment Sybil had stepped across the polished floor,
through the curtains, and inside.
Miracle of miracles, too, she seated herself with a smile on Betty's
bed; miracle of miracles, one of her arms went round Betty's waist as
the little new girl stood there, brush in hand, still trying to
swallow down the remembrance of her ignorance "of everything," and
still fighting against the idea of being a "Lone Guide."
But everything seemed to change suddenly with the appearance of the
head girl, and with the comfortable feeling of Sybil's arm. Betty
gave one gulp and didn't mind. Somehow she knew that Sybil had come
to put things right for her.
"Miss Carey said it would be best for me to come to-night instead of
waiting till to-morrow," said Sybil, giving Betty's slim figure a
little hug. "She thought that the news I've come to bring would give
her nice dreams!"
"'Nice dreams!'" Rene and Mona had by this time forgotten the
existence of such things as brushes and combs. They had turned, like
plants towards the sunlight, to stare through their drawn curtains at
Sybil as she spoke. Geraldine, though she was gazing too, was
dimpling so much at the same time, that Betty, catching sight of her
face, guessed suddenly that Gerry must know what Sybil had come to
say.
"It was Gerry's idea," said Sybil (Gerry stopped dimpling instantly
and began to brush her hair vigorously for a moment); "Gerry's
altogether. If she hadn't thought of it, perhaps I never should.
Not that I was not as disappointed as she was, I think, that we
couldn't fit Betty into the Daisy Patrol----"
Oh! It was something about the Guides. Were they going to fit her
into the Daisies after all?
"We're a full patrol, you see, Betty," Sybil went on, speaking in her
quiet, pretty voice. "Each patrol in our company has eight girls;
and there were thirty-two girls here this term before you came.
Well, that makes you--who bring the numbers up to thirty-three--a
dear little extra one." Sybil stopped.
"There's a 'Lone Guide' she could be. It's in the Guiding Book. We
were just telling her, Sybil," burst in Mona informatively, "she
could work up alone, and----"
Perhaps Sybil felt the sudden shrinking in Betty's form at the
mention of the word as the child stood there under the protection of
the head girl's arm. Perhaps not. But, whether or no, there was
suddenly a flash in Sybil's eye as she spoke.
"A 'Lone Guide,' Mona! What an idea! A Lone Guide at St.
Benedick's! With thirty-two Guides here already, who are only too
delighted to welcome another! Why, if Betty lived all alone at the
North or South Pole, or away at the Back o' Beyond, she _might_ be a
Lone Guide, just till she had a chance to join a company. But
_here_! Just as though any one of us would _let_ Betty work at
Guiding on her lonesome!"
The strong, gentle arm felt very protective and kind.
"Sorry, Sybil," murmured Mona, suddenly remembering her brush.
"It was me that thought of the Lone Guide," piped up Rene. "I was
reading about it in the holidays; Mona only followed on, Sybil. And
it's not that we don't _want_ Betty in the Daisies."
"_Want_! I should rather think we do want her when Guides are
friends of the whole world." Sybil spoke quite indignantly. "The
Cowslips want her, and the Foxgloves too, and the Buttercups, as well
as the Daisies---in fact, the whole company wants her. So she
mustn't _think_ of being a Lone Guide again! The only difficulty
is--or rather, _was_--that we wondered which patrol she should be
attached to as a recruit while she works up for her Tenderfoot badge."
The words were still strange to Betty, but she didn't mind now. She
was listening breathlessly and happily. "Recruit; Tenderfoot;
patrol." Well, Sybil was there now, ready to help, and already Sybil
had promised that she should not be a Lone Guide!
"And then--" the head girl's voice broke in on Betty's thoughts.
There was quite a joyous sound in Sybil's tone, as though she had
something joyous to say--"it was Gerry who thought of a way."
The eyes of Mona and Rene turned enviously and wonderingly towards
Gerry: Gerry's eyes were fixed on Sybil. Sybil, addressing her
remarks to Betty alone, with her arm still round Betty's waist, went
on,--
"It would be nice, we thought, in so very many ways for you to be
attached to the Daisies. Gerry and Mona and Rene, you see, are all
Daisies; and you share their room. You are nearly the youngest girl
at St. Benedick's, too, and are likely to be in the lowest class, of
course; and you will find several Daisies there. Of course, _any_
girl in the company would help you--or they wouldn't be worth their
salt as Guides--but it _is_ nice and friendly to work together with
one's own patrol. Well, then--" Sybil stopped for a moment.
"After our meeting to-night," she went on, "Gerry stopped to speak to
me"--Sybil gave Gerry a quick but very friendly smile--"and she said
that she had thought of a way of linking you on with the Daisies. It
sounded such a good idea when I heard it; but, of course, I had to
speak to Miss Carey first. For she, you see, Betty, is head of the
Guides as well as headmistress of the school. I went straight to
her; and Miss Carey agreed with Gerry and me that it is a splendid
idea. You, Betty, are to be the _mascot_ of our patrol!"
"_There!_" shouted Gerry, dancing about like a dimpled dervish.
"A 'mascot'?" said Betty, smiling but in a half-bewildered fashion.
Mascots were lucky things, she knew; but-- Everybody liked mascots,
of course. But how could _she_ be one?
"Lots of regiments in the war had mascots," said Sybil. "And
companies of Guides have them, too, sometimes. A patrol mascot is a
special pet of the patrol to which it belongs always. Not that a
mascot is usually a girl, of course. I've never heard of a little
girl being a mascot before. That's where Gerry's good idea came in!
Well, Betty, what do you say to it?" Sybil gave her a friendly
little shake.
"I'd--simply--love--to be--it," said Betty, gulping. "But what would
I have to _do_?"
"'_Do!_' You'll have to 'do' nothing, little Helter-skelter, except
just to 'love' being it," laughed Sybil. "That will be enough for
to-night anyhow. There _will_ be things to do, and plenty of them;
but we'll all love to explain them to you one by one. And, in the
meanwhile, I've come up here because Miss Carey wanted you to know
about it to-night. For we like little new girls to have nice
dreams!" Sybil laughed outright. "You are to be one of the
Daisies--our Daisy mascot. And every one of us--you, Mona, and you,
Rene, and Gerry, too, as well as the older Daisies,"--Sybil looked
round the listening group--"will feel a special sort of feeling about
Betty, and will try to explain to her what Guiding really means, and
will try to be extra-specially good Guides just because of having
her. And there's not going to be any more talk about Lone Guides,"
said Sybil, getting up; "nor of loneliness of any kind--not at St.
Benedick's. For you don't belong to the Daisy Patrol only, Betty,
you belong to the whole company; and every Guide in it, you know, is
a friend to every other Guide, you see."
[Illustration: Sybil bent down suddenly and kissed Betty.]
Sybil bent down suddenly and kissed Betty on the very spot on her
flushed cheek where the big tear had dried itself up a little while
before.
"Good-night, little Mascot," said Sybil. Then she waved her hand to
the rest of them and was gone.
Betty fell asleep that night feeling happier than she would half an
hour earlier have believed it possible that she could be so soon.
The loneliness was gone. Miss Carey's promise was coming true--she
didn't feel out of things any more in the very least; and, more than
that, she was somehow quite, quite sure that she never could feel out
of things in the same way again at school. For her wish had come
true, and she was to be one of the Daisies!
And the rest of the Guides--but particularly the Daisies--were to
show her "what to do" all in good time, so Sybil had said. And
to-night she had to do nothing, because Sybil had said so, but just
to "love" the idea of it, and to go to sleep and dream nice dreams.
That had been Miss Carey's message to her.
So, as she lay there, "peace came dropping slow." It seemed easier,
with the quiet atmosphere of the old house round her, and with the
memory of Miss Carey's quiet smile, and with the memory of the
feeling still of Sybil's strong restful arm round her, to leave even
the home worries resting quietly too in Auntie's kind, capable hands,
without fuss and fret.
"I--do--hope," Betty found herself thinking drowsily, "that Dad's
cocoa--" But even that fear didn't last long. She was one of the
first in the dormitory to fall asleep that night.
And, as the headmistress had wished, her dreams were glad, each one.
And the gladder, and the less lonely perhaps, for the fact that each
dream was a jumble of home things and school things, of home people
and school people, forming somehow a perfectly natural whole, and
fitting in together in the most happily marvellous way!
CHAPTER VI
THE GUIDE CUP
"Bet-ty!" called Gerry.
They were friends now. Their liking for each other, perhaps, had
dated from the very first moment they had met; but their friendship
had begun after Sybil's evening visit to the dormitory on the first
night of term.
For Gerry had taken up the rôle of protector that evening in her
quick, impulsive way. There had been something in the lonely look of
Betty, left standing in the middle of the floor of the Oak Room as
the Guides had all trooped out, which had appealed to the youngest
Guide of the company. Though younger in years than the rest, she was
perhaps as understanding in heart as any of the senior Guides
themselves. It had been the solitary look of Betty standing alone
"under the clock," too, among crowds of chatterers, which had brought
Gerry to her side; and that same lonely look had been responsible for
the mascot idea which had been hatched out of Gerry's brain, to be
hailed with enthusiasm by the entire company of Guides next day.
Betty had wakened, indeed, to "find herself famous." Everybody had
looked at her with friendly grins as the "new mascot." She was
addressed on the subject in a hail-fellow-well-met fashion by girls
who had not seemed to notice her existence before.
"I say, that makes nine, then, for the Daisies. Hope you will bring
them good luck. Not that they need it. They've kept the Cup for two
years."
"It's hard work with us; not luck." Thus Sybil, who was passing by,
and who spoke in a business-like tone. "Not that we're not glad of
our mascot," she added, smiling swiftly at Betty.
The whole school had been out in the garden that day between
breakfast and classes. Prefects moving about talking of school
arrangements together; groups of younger girls still exchanging
holiday reminiscences; Gerry, faithful still to her companion,
sticking, as cicerone, to Betty's side.
"I say, it is fun having you as mascot, you know. There are such
lots of things to show you, specially now that you're a Daisy: Guide
things. Not many out here, though, except, of course, the gardens."
In another minute the gardens had been reached.
The Guide plots occupied the strip of land behind St. Benedick's. In
years gone by this part of the grounds had been laid out as a large
lawn; but the land had been dug over, and divided into five portions,
each of equal size. A great part of the digging and the actual
making of the gardens had been done by the Guides themselves, under
the supervision and with the help of the head gardener. Very
gradually the work had been carried out; but now, several years since
the Guide movement had been adopted as part of the Benedick
curriculum, Betty's first glimpse of the gardens was a glimpse that
she did not soon forget.
The warm days of late spring that year had hastened the growth of the
early summer flowers. The gardens lay in a sheltered spot of the
grounds, and the wild profusion of their blooming plants--owing to
the fact that the gardeners had been absent for a matter of several
"good growing" weeks--and the reckless beauty of the luxuriant
flower-beds caused city-bred Betty to hold her breath. On the other
side of the building the stately garden, with its old-time dignity,
through which she had passed yesterday, was peaceful; _this_ garden
looked joyous--there was no other word.
"Isn't it lovely?" Gerry quite agreed. "That's the Daisy plot over
there. We choose flowers, all of us. In the War, you know, the beds
were used for vegetable growing mostly; and herbs grew there too. I
was too little to be here then; but Sybil told us. And then,
afterwards, Miss Carey said the girls could show by their gardens how
pleased they were that peace had come. It's--like cheers and flags
still, isn't it?" finished up Gerry.
She was right; the gardens were just like cheers and flags. The
gardens of youth; just as the gardens of age and dignity lay on the
other side of the house. Already great patches of different coloured
wallflowers were scenting the air; great clumps of pinks, too, were
already open. Dusty-millers and polyanthuses were clustered round
about. Pansies of all colours showed their faces; a big lilac-bush
was in full bloom; the red hawthorns were nearly over; and fruit
blossom was making the dwarf trees planted here and there both pink
and white with bloom. "We've got a gorse bush in ours," said Gerry,
"because we do so love the smell. We brought it home from a picnic
when it was small. It's small still; but we want to hear the pods
cracking in the sun some day when it's very hot, like they do on the
moor. The bees love the gardens, too," she finished up thoughtfully.
So they did; there was no doubt of that. Although nine o'clock had
not struck yet, the bees, buzzing and humming over the gardens,
seemed to have been marketing for hours.
"We always have a huge hedge of sweet-peas in one of the gardens,"
said Gerry. "Every year. Each of the patrols has it in turns. It's
the Foxgloves' turn now, so we'll catch the scent in our classroom,
because the hedge will be just under our window. Won't that be
lovely!" She gave a little skip of delight.
Betty had felt inclined to do the same on that first morning. She
had never known that school could give such delights, or that a
garden could give such a happy feeling. She had never owned a garden
before; but now, together with the rest of the Daisies, it certainly
seemed that she owned a part of this. "At least, I suppose that only
being a mascot," she inquired eagerly, "doesn't mean that I don't
count."
"There isn't any 'only' about being a mascot, I'm certain," Gerry had
told her; "though we might ask Sybil. Of course it's partly your
garden too. There's the Cup, though, of course. I don't know about
_that_," she added, wrinkling up her forehead as she bent over the
bed of pinks. "I say," she suddenly broke out, "here's a snail. We
don't want him on the pinks, do we? And I daresay he likes ferns
just as much. I'm going to put him over the fence into the wood.
Mona squashes them, but I think that's hateful."
"What were you saying about the Cup?" inquired Betty, eagerly falling
to upon a snail search; "I wish you would tell me. One of the other
girls said----"
[Illustration: There, just inside, stood a small silver cup.]
"'The Cup!' Well, it's just the Guide Cup. It belongs to the
Daisies this year," explained Gerry proudly. "You'll see it. It's
in the Oak Room, and if you had been watching yesterday you might
have noticed that our patrol was standing just underneath it when
Miss Carey called us all up. On the wall, on a bracket, that's where
the Cup stands," went on Gerry. "The Daisies lead out first always
this year, because we won it. Well, on Midsummer Day Miss Carey will
decide again which patrol has been the best; and whichever she
decides on will call the Cup theirs, and stand under it in Hall, and
file out of Hall first, and take first place." Gerry stopped.
"I should like to see it," said Betty, with sparkling eyes; "most
specially as I'm a Daisy too."
"You can't till to-night. We don't go near the Oak Room all day.
Unless--" Gerry broke off. "You can see it through the window
_now_, if you like. Come along. The Oak Room window looks out this
way. Just across here, between the Daisy and the Cowslip gardens on
this strip of grass. (We _did_ grow daffs and snowdrops in the grass
two years ago, but we couldn't help stepping on them when we went by,
and that was so horrid that we stopped growing them!) Here, you
_can_ see!"
Betty could see quite plainly. They had arrived under one of the big
windows of the Oak Room, and there, just inside, was the little ledge
on which stood a small silver cup.
"You could see it better--you could even touch it," said her guide
proudly, "if the window were open. But all the same----"
All the same Betty feasted her eyes on it as they stood there in joy
and pride. The Cup was the possession of her patrol, she
thought--until Midsummer Day at least!
That had happened on the first morning after her arrival; but a whole
week of term had passed by since then--a week which had really seemed
as full as a year.
On the evening of that first day the new girl had found herself
called into the headmistress's room again to answer Miss Carey's
promised inquiry whether Betty was shaking down happily into "school
ways." There had been no doubt, from the look in the child's eyes,
what her answer would be, even before she had stammered out the
words,--
"Oh, _yes_. I never guessed----"
No, Betty had never guessed the evening before that next day she
would stand gazing round the Daisy garden feeling like this. As she
stood on the same spot a week later, she felt as happy, or perhaps
happier than before.
Lessons? They were hard, perhaps; but then everybody was patient and
understanding. Miss Drury and Miss Stewart, Miss Lee and
Mademoiselle--they all seemed to know when she was trying, and to be
quite satisfied with that. But when classes were over life was like
a dream; there was only one "only" at St. Benedick's, only one thorn
in Betty's bed of roses--the absence of the twins and baby; of
anybody, in fact, who needed her in the same way that she had been
always needed at home!
Betty still felt a little choky at times, therefore, not to have
Jan's bed pulled close to her own; not to have to play "Little
Mother" all day long. If there had been any "mothering" of any kind
to do at St. Benedick's, then school would have been to her a perfect
place. But except for Gerry, who had begun by protecting Betty
herself, and who certainly did not intend to be "mothered," Betty was
the youngest girl of all. Mona and Rene were each a few months
older, and proportionately proud of the fact; and the Mascot found
herself in much the same position at St. Benedick's as that occupied
at home by Jan, the twin.
She was smiled at by the seniors, and petted a little. And though to
be "treated like a little one" was just what she needed, and lovely,
too, in a way, yet Betty wanted to pet some one herself! If it
hadn't been for the garden her heart would have had an empty place in
it which nothing else at St. Benedick's quite knew how to fill.
But the Daisy garden was hers--partly, at least. Sybil had told her
so. At the first Guide meeting the patrol leader--very quiet and
business-like, and altogether unlike the affectionate laughing girl
who had sat on shy Betty's bed and hugged her--had presided over her
patrol, and had explained, after going into details, none of which
the Mascot understood, what Betty's work would be.
"I want Mona and Rene and Gerry to teach you the Guide promises, and
to explain them, Betty. They will do so as well as they can, and you
can all talk them over together. Then, on Saturday week, you may
come and repeat them to me. That will be enough Guide work for you;
though, if you like, you might begin practising some of the easy
knots. Perhaps in the garden, you know."
"Sybil," Gerry had piped up, "Betty was asking--you see, she wants to
know if she may garden. She's not taking dancing, nor music, nor
singing, nor riding, nor----"
"That will do, Gerry," Sybil stopped her.
Betty was taking none of the "extra subjects" at school. Auntie and
Dad had explained the reason to her--it was because of "the expense";
and Betty had nodded a business-like head at the time.
At St. Benedick's, however, Miss Carey had put the matter to her in
another way. "I am very glad, my dear, that you are to have a quiet
term. You will have plenty of free time on your hands in which to
learn to be happy in quiet ways."
Betty had found, so far, that her steps had always seemed to lead her
gardenwards at those times. For there was generally a broken stalk
to help, or a flower to water, or the progress of some bee to follow,
or the gradual growth of some small seedling to wonder at. All the
things in the garden were smaller than Betty. Defenceless, too.
Somehow they seemed to need her a little bit in the way that the
children had needed her at home. She had looked up eagerly to hear
what Sybil would say in answer to Gerry's suggestion.
"Why, of course she may garden. Whenever she likes. I will go with
you myself to-day, Betty, and show you what you may do."
In Betty's first week, then, she had grown more and more in love with
the Daisy garden. All the "quiet hours," as Miss Carey had called
them, had been spent there alone. It was not until the last day of
the week that she suddenly began to wonder if she really were quite
as alone as she had thought.
For something had happened. Once before she had half-guessed at a
"something." And again, to-day, there was "something" going on which
could not exactly be explained!
She was trying to explain it to herself, sitting back on her heels on
the grassy strip between the plots, when suddenly Gerry's voice broke
through the silence.
"Betty," called Gerry. "Bet-ty!"
CHAPTER VII
THE FAIRY PIPER
"But there couldn't be!" said Gerry, staring. "You see, nobody's
there."
"There was, though," said Betty. "Listen, I truly believe I heard it
again."
Both the girls sat back on the sunny patch of grass between the
gardens and held their breath.
"O-ver the hills and far a-wa-ay!"
The air of the quaint old song could plainly be heard, growing
fainter and more far-away even as they listened, but certainly there
for all that.
"The funny part of it is," said Betty, "that somehow I think I've
heard it before. Only I never thought it came from a person, you
know, Gerry. It seemed the same kind of tune as the bees somehow--a
sort of out-of-doors sound, and mixed up with every other sound."
She stopped, wondering whether her companion would understand what
she meant.
Gerry, however, appeared to take the remark as a perfectly
intelligible one. She nodded gravely.
[Illustration: The pair of them were leaning over the fence.]
"Yes, I know. Only it couldn't be, of course; because it really is a
_tune_. I wish----"
By this time the pair of them were leaning over the fence which
divided the gardens from the school wood.
"Nobody's here," said Gerry. "You see, it's private; and we couldn't
hear sounds from the road--it's too far off. But the sound did come
from the wood; I heard it too."
"Just as though," burst in Betty, "it was a kind of 'Piper of Dreams'
sound. Gerry, there's a picture in the post-office at home--framed,
you know, and to sell. There's a boy there, sitting under a tree--a
kind of fairy boy, I think--playing a pipe. And rabbits and birds
are round his knees listening to him, and not minding him. I've
often taken the twins to see it"--Betty gave a little gulp of
remembrance--"and some day when I'm rich I shall buy it for them.
But even then I shan't like it any better than I do now, I don't
think. Perhaps not so much. It's nice not to have a thing for
altogether, but to have to go out and look at it."
Gerry nodded again. "But," she objected, "this music couldn't be
him--I mean we couldn't have fairy-piper music here, unless--"
Transfixed with a sudden idea she gave a little cry. "If it came
from _Witch's_ Wood now," said Gerry. "_That's_ supposed to be
magic. But of course it didn't; and no _witch_ would ever play fairy
music of course."
"'Witch's Wood!'" repeated Betty, staring.
"You can ask Rene about it. Her father is the doctor here. She's
only a boarder at Benedick's because she wants to be so much. She
knows about Witch's Wood; it was she who told Mona and me." Gerry
turned from the fence and seized a trowel. "Let's go on gardening,
Betty, and get the ground ready for the mignonette seeds, like Sybil
said. We'll listen while we do it. It's funny that I've been to
school a year longer than you and never heard it before till to-day.
And you've heard it often."
"I _think_ I have," corrected Betty. "Always when I've been alone, I
think; or else I would have been sure to have asked if you and the
others were hearing it too. To-day, though, you came along just as I
was beginning to wonder about it. Perhaps if we don't talk it will
come back."
Gardening went on, however, after that without the interruption that
they hoped for. Every now and then the girls lifted their heads, but
no sound came from the wood on the other side of the fence save the
faint soughing of the breeze in the branches and the occasional call
of a bird.
"Doesn't anybody ever go in there, Gerry?" inquired Betty, rather
inclined to look upon the wood as the home of Faery.
"Anybody? Why, of course; we often do. The senior girls built their
huts in there for the Pioneer badge last summer, and they gave the
whole school tea. And we fetch primrose plants for the gardens from
the wood--from where the wood doesn't miss them, you know. We often
go in there, too, on hot days. But it's private except to us. No
one else goes there." Gerry threw back her mop of hair. "We might
get some foxglove plants for the garden from there later on. They'd
be lovely."
"Wouldn't they!" agreed Betty.
But she spoke half-abstractedly. Her heart was filled with another
idea. The sound of the music and the remembrance of the dream
picture in the little post-office at home had set her own dreams
racing. Gerry had mentioned Witch's Wood; and the name had a
splendid mystery about it too. At the very next chance she would ask
Rene to tell her about it.
"What?" Up in the dormitory that night, while they brushed their
hair, Rene listened rather incredulously to their tale. "No, _I've_
never heard it. It must have been a mistake. Or else a trespassing
boy. Though--" Rene broke off.
"Well?" inquired Gerry, scenting disbelief in Rene's voice.
"Dad says that the boys _don't_ trespass in our wood. He says we're
lucky. He says that the Witch's Wood being close by is more help to
the school wood than a hundred 'Trespassers will be Prosecuted'
boards," finished up the doctor's daughter.
"But _our_ wood's not Witch's Wood," broke in Gerry.
"Of course it's not. But they're close; there's only a broken-down
fence between. So I suppose the boys think the witch might lean over
the palings and catch them," Rene laughed.
"I wish you'd tell me about Witch's Wood," broke in Betty eagerly.
"It's such a story-book name, and so thrilly."
"It's not so thrilly as it sounds, then." Rene's tone sounded
superior. "It's absolutely ordinary. And it's only private because
the owner died abroad years ago and his estate went into Chancery,
and the village people got ideas about the wood because of the
haunted cottage in the middle. They _say_ that it's haunted anyhow.
They say that it's a witch's cottage, and that it gave the name to
the wood. But Dad says it ought to be spelt Wych's Wood, and that
it's because of the wych elms that it's got its name. And he's sure
to be right."
"Besides," said Mona severely, breaking in, "we're Guides. And
Guides don't believe in ghosts."
"I don't either. Oh, do tell everything about the witch's cottage,
though, Rene," begged Betty.
"It's there. And nobody goes into the wood, so nobody goes near it.
A lawyer came down from London once and looked at it. Dad says it
couldn't possibly be lived in. That's all."
It wasn't "all" to Betty, though. She had made up so many fairy
stories for Jan and Jack in the past that she had grown used to
weaving wonderful fancies out of very little material by dint of a
great deal of imagination. Here, with Witch's Wood as a background,
and with the memory of the "fairy music" still echoing in her mind in
spite of the superior looks of Rene and Mona, Betty felt herself
equipped with material for a whole host of tales. There was no one
to tell them to unfortunately, though; and her "supposings" met with
a cold reception from two of the dormitory at least.
"You couldn't have heard it. And Guides don't believe in ghosts,"
repeated Mona.
"Nor do I. Ghosts are silly and frightening," burst out Betty
impatiently. "I never said a word about them. Witches are quite
different; they might be quite nice, only rather cross on top with
unhappiness. And I am sure some Guides _must_ believe in fairies
anyway!"
But the others appeared to consider that the Mascot was not qualified
to express such definite opinions. Only Gerry stood up for her
friend.
"Truly, Mona, I don't see why not either. Betty, you'd better ask
Sybil--when you go to repeat the promises, you know. Oh, I say, that
reminds me: she'll never know them unless we help her now."
The learning of the Guide promises had been a labour on which the
whole dormitory had employed itself, anxious that the Mascot should
be a credit to the patrol. By the end of her second week Betty was
word perfect at least. She had learned to repeat that a Guide's
honour is to be trusted; that a Guide is loyal; that she is a friend
of all, and so on: there were ten commandments in the law. Betty,
studiously repeating them at odd moments, found herself wondering if
she ever would be good enough to be elected a real Guide; whether she
could ever be good enough to make the Guide's promise! The rest of
the guide work which Sybil had set her--the tying and untying of
sundry boot-lace ends, under the direction of Mona on the lawn in the
grounds, into knots--was just like play. There had been a Guiding
practice too already; for the younger Guides, under the direction of
Eve--Sybil's second in the patrol--had to study some of the woodcraft
signs, and how to track and trail. That, so Betty decided, had also
been play.
But the promises and the law felt different--not play at all. And
somehow, though she couldn't explain it, the salute seemed to "come
in between."
"A kind of bridge the salute is. You feel sort of responsible when
you salute, though it's fun too. But the promises and the law
_couldn't_ be fun," was her summing up to Sybil on the Saturday, a
fortnight after her arrival, when the head of the patrol had sent for
the newest recruit.
"A bridge, is it? Well, perhaps," agreed Sybil, smiling at the
recruit. "Well, you can say the law through as well as any one of
us, I think. But being word perfect, you know, is just the very
beginning. Now let me see the reef-line knot. And you have been
doing some gardening, I know."
"Oh, Sybil," Betty remembered suddenly, "may Guides believe in
fairies?"
Sybil thought they certainly might, and that many of them did, after
screwing up her brows a little to deliberate. She listened, too, to
the tale of the fairy music in much more sympathetic a manner than
had Rene and Mona. "I have never heard it," she said, "but I should
not like to say you made a mistake. Besides, you say that Gerry
heard it too?"
"Once, when she came up suddenly," said Betty, with eyes glistening.
"But till then I'd always been alone, you know."
"Well, next time I am gardening alone I shall listen for it too,"
said the head of the patrol soberly. "But even if you should find
out that it is not fairies who make it, that need not disappoint you,
need it? Tell me if you hear it again, though." Sybil stopped short
and coloured a little before she went on. "Some things," she said
(shyly, Betty thought, if a head girl _could_ feel shy), "are
loveliest somehow if one keeps them secret. Like fairy music,
perhaps, and--oh, other things that sometimes happen when one is
alone. It somehow takes the bloom off the loveliness to talk about
them." Sybil stopped. "Miss Carey said something like that in the
Oak Room last year," said Sybil; "but I am afraid I have not made it
plain enough for you to understand."
Betty retreated into the garden feeling more anxious than ever,
however, that the "Piper of Dreams" should play. The rest of the
girls were at sketching class, away at the other end of the grounds
under the charge of the art mistress; she herself was free for one of
her quiet hours. She was still thinking of what Sybil had said as
she made her way to the Daisy plot and up beyond it to the fence
which divided the gardens from the school wood, and stood there,
leaning over and listening.
"Just in case----"
There was no sound; but suddenly her eyes fell on something bright
lying at her feet, and she bent down. A peacock's feather lay there.
It seemed to have been pushed through an opening in the fence, and
lay on the blade of the spade which she had left there that afternoon.
"I believe it's a present to _me_!" said Betty, staring.
CHAPTER VIII
IN WITCH'S WOOD
She stood perfectly still and gazed at the feather for a moment.
Then she leaned over the fence to see if there was anything else to
be seen.
"If there was a sign of any one--" said Betty aloud, as she broke off
suddenly and stood still by the fence trying to think out the idea
that had come to her. "Why," she went on, "I said the word 'sign,'
and I never realized that it's a Guide word. Eve was talking about
'sign' at the Guiding lesson. She was showing us how to track snails
by the 'sign' of their silvery trails in the garden. She told me to
remember the story of Hop o' my Thumb, too, and his 'sign' that he
laid down so that his brothers should find their way home. And one
minute ago I was saying there might be 'sign' here. I know what I
shall do!"
She did it, too. Why not? She was over the fence at once. After
all, she had an hour to spare, and the girls had told her that the
school wood was not forbidden. They had said that they often went
there, and although Betty herself had entered into her third week at
St. Benedick's without as yet visiting the wood herself, yet that was
only because there had been so many other things to do.
Now the moment had come, however. She clambered over the fence and
reached the other side, intent on discovering whether there really
was a "piper of dreams."
The tracking of "sign" is not easy for a beginner--especially alone
and in the deepness of a wood. In the Guiding lesson over which Eve
had presided the older girl had helped the younger ones more than
Betty had realized until she started off on this quest of her own.
Also being on the tiptoe of excitement, and forgetting to "hasten
slowly," she was inclined to jump to conclusions too readily. She
took a lightning glance round.
"If somebody's been, where did they come from? Have they left any
tracks? If so, I've got to find them. That's the sort of thing Eve
would say," she told herself. Then she stood still for a moment, and
certainly noticed that close under the fence, in the shadow of a tree
trunk, there was a heap of leaves which had recently been disturbed.
This might be "sign," she thought eagerly. The leaves seemed pressed
down, as though some one might have been crouching there--a wild
thing of the wood, perhaps. Betty was off and away, taking her path
through the trees.
Once among them, however, she lost all trace of more "sign." The
wood seemed bigger, too, than she had expected when once she had got
beyond the first beeches past a clearing which was carpeted with
beech mast, and then to a grove of trees beyond. As the others said,
the school wood seemed to have no approach from the road at all.
Behind her, as she knew, were the school grounds; but, if she had not
known they were so close, she would have felt herself very far indeed
from any human habitation in the stillness of the wood.
For overhead the trees seemed sighing as though they held secrets
that they never meant to tell except in a language of their own which
no one but themselves could ever understand. Underfoot the dry
leaves crackled, and occasionally a bird, taking the rustling path
itself, caused Betty to look round hopefully.
"I never knew before that birds' steps could sound so loud in a
wood," thought she. "That's three times I've turned round, and it's
always been a thrush pecking under the leaves. Well, that's
something about birds, I suppose, that I've learned at first-hand,
like Eve told us to try to do in Guide lesson. I shall tell her next
time."
But Betty was beginning to feel rather disappointed, for she had
found out absolutely nothing to help her in her quest. "I've been
too 'helter-skelter,' that's what Sybil would say," she remarked to
herself. "Well, I'd better go back and try again to-morrow."
But going back was not quite so simple a course as she had expected.
She had forgotten to notice any distinguishing features on any of the
trees, and now they all seemed alike.
"Here's a hurdle sort of thing. Did I pass it before?" she asked
herself. "And that tree; it looks familiar somehow. If I only knew
which way St. Benedick's lies! The rest of the Guides have
compasses, and Gerry said they made it much easier to find one's way.
I shall ask her to-morrow. But now I don't know exactly where I am."
She turned and walked on. "I rather think, if I pass these trees,
that I see that clearing-place beginning again just beyond."
She was not in the least nervous, for, after all, the school must be
very near. The adventure was "thrilly," she decided. It was not
until the next trees had been passed, and the "clearing-place"
reached, that Betty suddenly stood still and stared.
"Why!" she said.
For this was not the bare patch between the trees which she had
passed before--just beyond the beeches which separated it from St.
Benedick's. This was a clearing, certainly, but quite a different
one. The ground was studded with clumps of bracken and with tussocks
of blue-bells; but there was something else in the clearing too.
A cottage! A little tumble-down desolate cottage! And at the sight
of it Betty stood perfectly still, staring with eyes filled with
wonder.
"I've come wrong! It's the witch's cottage," she said. "Oh, you
_poor_ thing!"
For if ever a tiny forsaken dwelling was in need of Betty's motherly
ministrations, this cottage certainly seemed that one. The fact that
it was presumably "haunted," and shunned by the villagers in
consequence; the fact that a witch might still have her abode there;
even the fact that she herself must certainly be considered by the
law in the light of a trespasser, were forgotten as she gazed.
"I must be in Witch's Wood," she said to herself. "Rene said it was
close; but I didn't understand that I could come into it without
knowing. A fence, she said. Well, that hurdle thing must have been
part of a broken-down old fence. I've come a good way too."
But she was hurrying forward all the same as she spoke. For she
couldn't do anything else. She could not turn back until she had
"done something" for the little place which looked so desperately in
need of mothering. Its roof was broken, if a roof the cottage could
still be said to possess. Its door seemed to flap open mournfully.
Its windows were cracked and broken. Mosses and lichens grew on its
walls. Desolation seemed to be its very name. Betty broke into a
run, therefore; then, as she reached its step, she hesitated before
she entered.
"I suppose I may! Oh, I must! No one lives here. Rene said so."
In she went.
A two-roomed little one-storied cottage. Its two rooms opened into
each other, and the door between gaped wide. As Betty entered the
first room she could survey the entire house.
Was it a witch's cottage? she asked herself suddenly, as she stood
there staring. _Could_ it be, after all?
For, absolutely empty of furnishings as it certainly was, with its
paper peeling miserably from its walls; with damp running down them;
with insects holding carnival in its corners; with its shutters
flapping by rusty hinges outside its broken panes--yet--yet, strange
and wonderful to say, arranged in a primitive design on the dirty
floor of the room, lay flowers! Fresh and fragrant, in a quaint,
almost elfin-like pattern. Wild hyacinths, late primroses, anemones,
stars of Bethlehem--the floor of the room seemed carpeted with them
as though some quaint idea of design had been at the back of some
one's mind. For "some one" must have done it--a "some one," Betty
was certain, who must be of fairy origin.
"I _am_ trespassing," she said suddenly out loud. And she turned and
found herself hurrying away, though she couldn't have expressed the
reason of her flight in words. "Some one is looking after it. It
isn't so miserable as it looks outside," she told herself, as she ran
with her heart thumping. "It must be a fairy house."
[Illustration: Was it a witch's cottage?]
But as her heart stopped thumping she began to try to think things
out more common-sensibly. "I'm thirteen," said Betty to herself;
"and though Sybil does say that fairies aren't babyish to believe in,
yet I do know that to find a cottage like that is absolutely queer.
Jan and Jack would believe in it, but I hardly can. Still it was
there; and the wood is called Witch's Wood by everybody. And Rene
says that the villagers are afraid of it. I could never be _afraid_
of whoever it is who puts those flowers there. Not that it can be
haunted--" She broke off. "Well, now, I simply _must_ find my way
out," she said, trying to banish the mystery of the cottage from her
mind.
It was a difficult business, but she managed at last. After turning
and twisting through the trees of Witch's Wood, she came suddenly at
last within sight and sound of the everyday humdrum world again.
"I'm evidently some way from St. Benedick's," she thought, "but I'm
coming out at last. I can see a road; and when I get to the fence,
any one I meet will show me the way. Why, what's that?"
For she had reached the fence now, and voices were plainly audible
from the road below. Lusty laughter and shoutings; evidently a crowd
of village urchins were playing there. Betty made up her mind to
wait until they had passed by. She did not wish to make a descent
from Witch's Wood until the coast was clear of them. She peeped
through the broken palings and then suddenly changed her mind.
For a whole crowd of good-for-nothing small boys had collected, and
were circling round one of their number who seemed to Betty, from her
hiding-place, the queerest figure on which she had ever set eyes. He
was a tall boy of perhaps her own age, but tattered and torn as she
had never seen a boy before; his garments seemed quaint, too, almost
ludicrous, and he seemed trying, as he stood there, to hold his own
unaided against the jeering, cat-calling throng.
At the sight Betty's eyes blazed, and she was over the fence like a
flash. "Let him alone this instant," called she to the amazed and
terrified group.
For terrified they were at the sight of her, appearing as she did
over the fence of Witch's Wood. In one instant, to a boy, the crowd
had dispersed in the opposite direction, leaving their victim alone.
The stranger might have been aged fourteen, but his clothes were
evidently intended for a younger boy by far, and they had been
patched and mended so thoroughly, and with such disregard for
colour-matching, that he seemed to possess a piebald appearance. His
head was covered, too, with a shock of the roughest hair Betty had
ever seen; and by the expression of his face it was plain that he was
simple-minded. His cheek was cut and bleeding too; but he seemed to
take little notice of his hurts. Instead, he made straight for
Betty, shaking his fist and pointing to the wood.
"You munna go nigh Witch's Wood. You munna. You munna go nigh it.
There's witches in it, and ghostses, and spookses; you munna go nigh
it." He shook and shivered as he pointed there.
"It's all right," said Betty in her motherly tone. "Don't worry. I
lost my way; but I shan't go there again. If you will tell me where
there is a stream, I'd like to wash that cut, though, on your cheek."
CHAPTER IX
BETTY KEEPS A SECRET
"I say," remarked the inhabitants of Dormitory Three in chorus.
Not that they were assembled in the dormitory, but "hasten slowly"
time was just over on the afternoon of the day following Betty's
adventure in the wood.
"Hasten slowly" time occurred every day, and occupied the hour
immediately following each midday meal. The name had originated
after the utterance of an apt remark by one of the middle school
girls who had discovered that the hour's rest enforced by rule at St.
Benedick's was not waste of valuable time after all, but tended
rather, in the end, to help towards a fuller use of energy. To new
pupils hailing from other and perhaps more "go-ahead" schools it was
something of a surprise to find that from two o'clock to three every
one of the middle and junior girls was required to endure or enjoy an
hour's _dolce far niente_--stretched out in summer time on the lawns,
and in winter time on rugs in the Oak Hall.
Of all the strange ways of school Betty had found this one, at first,
the hardest to bear. Lying perfectly still on a sunny lawn during
the first two afternoons her thoughts had travelled homewards at an
alarming pace. She had longed to be up and "doing something." And
to know that sixty minutes of this home-sick time was ahead of her
daily until the end of term seemed more than she could bear. On the
third day, however, to her vast surprise, she had fallen asleep in
the middle of a torturing thought as to whether Auntie had remembered
to get those shoes of Jan's both soled and heeled, and had wakened in
amazement to find Gerry at her side while the church clock struck
three. But after that experience the spell had been broken somehow;
Betty had grown to look forward to the "hasten slowly" hour as one of
the most restful in her restful days.
It was a good time to repeat the Guide law and the promises, sleepily
and more sleepily until they almost changed to dreams. It was a good
time to think thoughts that, otherwise, the business of the day might
have ruled out altogether. Betty thought of the fairy piper music
sometimes in this hour; and remembered what Sybil had said, and
wondered. On this particular afternoon she had been thinking
curiously, quietly, and almost lovingly of her strange secret
adventure in the witch's cottage.
And she had decided--had quite decided--that the adventure there was
one of the things Sybil had meant. "Some things are loveliest when
they are kept secret," the head girl had said. "Things that
sometimes happen when one is alone. It takes the bloom off them to
talk of them." Betty remembered every word, though she had not
understood at the time what the words could mean. Now she was
beginning to understand, though; so she told herself. For if she
were to tell any one, the telling, somehow, would spoil her
adventure-memory. That secret of the witch's cottage--which had
seemed so desolate outside, but which, inside, had been beautiful,
cared for by some strange, mysterious magic--was her own. Perhaps
the piper of dreams was connected with it. Perhaps----
Betty was still drowsily and happily "perhapsing" on the subject
under the shade of one of the great old trees in the grounds, when
the prefect whose duty that afternoon it was to preside over the
juniors' quiet hour gave the signal for them to rise.
"I say, Betty, tell us. We've not had a single chance to ask you
about yesterday afternoon till now. You never said a word about it
in the dormitory; but the other girls know. There's plenty of time
while we get our letter-writing things. You can even tell us while
we write them. Miss Drury says we can write letters under the trees
this afternoon because it's too hot indoors."
"I'm not going to tell _anything_ while I write letters," said Betty
with startled conviction. Sunday afternoons were packed full, as she
rightly considered, since there were five anxious, loving folk at
home to be reassured concerning her health and happiness, and regaled
with tit-bits of weekly information. "And besides," she continued
hurriedly, "there's nothing to tell."
"There is." Mona and Rene were convinced on that point. "About the
boy whose face you were patching up when Drina and Maud came along.
They said it showed you'd make a good Guide. And however came you to
be in the road at all?" finished up Mona.
[Illustration: "And that Robby-boy saw me climbing out."]
"Anybody in the world, not only Guides," said Betty with rising
colour, "would help a boy with a cut cheek, I should trust and
hope--especially when he was frightened, and seeing that he was sort
of queer, you know. When Drina and Maud came along, though, it was
_they_ who helped him more than me."
"They know First Aid, being senior Guides, of course," put in Mona
informatively. "And Drina anyway, being head of the Foxgloves, has
heaps of badges. She would know simply _anything_! It happens that
she knew who the boy was. It was just Robby--old Granny Beaver's
boy. I know him too, quite well; they call him a 'natural.' We
often get hot water from that cottage in the holidays when we go for
picnics at home."
"He was dreadfully frightened, whoever he was," said Betty again;
"but I think he was brave too."
"Brave _and_ frightened?" said Rene. "Well, anyway Drina told
Eve--for I heard her--that when they came up you were mending his
cheek; and he was crying."
"It wasn't that kind of bravery I meant." But Betty stuck to her
point. "He did cry, I know. He was crying, too, when the boys were
teasing him. But--well, I'd got into Witch's Wood by mistake, you
see," she continued hurriedly. "I've explained to Drina, and she
understands how. And that Robby-boy saw me climbing out. The other
boys ran off because they were frightened of me--thinking I was the
witch, I suppose," went on Betty, "and never looked back. But
he--well, he might have run, too, I suppose; but he didn't. He was
_brave_, like I said. He even forgot his cuts and things and stopped
crying, and kept on telling me how spooky and frightening and all
that the wood is. And he was shaking with fright himself all the
time. I could see it. And _yet_ he went on."
By the emphasis of her utterance her convictions carried weight. The
others nodded.
"Drina said that," agreed Mona. "She said he kept begging you not to
go back and get spooked by the witch. Of course he's sort of simple;
and I expect his granny frightened him about it when he was little.
She's rather hateful. Perhaps he felt grateful to you for taking his
part and wanted to pay you back. Didn't he follow you home?"
"Yes, poor darling," said Betty in her most motherly tone--"and
simply wouldn't go, and wouldn't go. And even when he _did_ go he
kept saying that he'd do something for me some day. That's all,"
finished up Betty, as, cumbered with a writing pad and two sharp
pencils, she turned lawnwards again. "It wasn't an adventure,
except, of course----"
She stopped.
Except the part of the afternoon when she had found the witch's
cottage. But she had decided to say nothing about that. Not to Mona
and Rene; not even to Gerry; no, and not even in the weekly letter
home. It was to be her own secret "with all the lovely bloom left
on," as Sybil had advised.
Her experience in the wood, however, even though a part of it was
known only to herself, came into active consideration at the next
meeting of the senior Guides.
"It just shows how useful it is for the juniors to understand
tracking," remarked Sybil. "A less sensible girl than Betty Carlyle
might have got right into the heart of the wood. And perhaps, if the
others had been telling her silly tales, she would have been more
frightened than she was. There's the cottage there, you see, I
believe, still. That cottage which is supposed to contain a ghost."
"A cottage, Sybil?" Some of the seniors were not even aware of its
existence.
"Oh yes; quite a village story. And Rene, since she lives in the
district, knows about it. No Guide believes in ghosts, naturally;
but Betty is only such a raw recruit, and there is a cottage there.
It's out of bounds, of course, and lies right in the middle of the
wood, I believe; and, our directions being to keep on this side of
the broken paling, it's out of bounds to us. But Betty knew nothing
about that apparently, and went straight on."
"She said nothing about any cottage, however," put in Drina. "When
Maud and I found her patching up the boy she was at her most
energetic--apparently comforting him on account of his own fears of
the wood, and assuring him that she was not a witch herself! He had
been telling her his fears; that's what Maud and I thought."
"But all the same," Sybil spoke up, "I am going to make some extra
practice time for all the junior Daisies. Betty says that she tried
to follow 'sign,'--evidently acting on Eve's instructions--but that
she could not find any! Well, they shall have a tracking practice
next week."
"You mean to keep the Cup next year, then, Sybil!"
"Let the best patrol win, of course; but I mean ours to be the best
if dogged will do it," said the head of the school.
The junior Daisies, therefore, on the following Friday afternoon were
thrilled and enthralled at the appearance of a special notice on the
notice-board of their patrol. There would be, it appeared, an
expedition on the following Saturday week, captained by the head.
All Daisies were expected to attend, and--before the practice--they
were requested to "make themselves as ready as possible" for the
afternoon's lesson, which would, it appeared, include exercise in
spooring and tracking.
"But what can _I_ do?" inquired Betty rather helplessly in the
dormitory that night. For her recent efforts to extricate herself
from the wood by means of applying the principles laid down by Eve
had met with scant success. And she was terribly anxious not to
disgrace the patrol to which she was attached.
"Sybil won't expect you to know _anything_. _We're_ going to read
up," informed Mona and Rene.
But to the Mascot the blue Guide book was as yet forbidden ground.
Betty would in feverish eagerness, as Sybil probably guessed, have
read and re-read the blue book through, and in trying to work out
every principle at one and the same time have failed miserably.
"Nothing was to be gained by snatching," as Miss Carey had said on
the first night. Betty's knowledge must come by slow degrees.
"I tell you what," said Gerry, noticing her friend's unhappy face,
"we'll both practise together. There's a week before the expedition,
and you'll learn some things anyway by then. There's a sandy place
in the grounds here where we've worked at making footprints, and
we'll start on that. Different sized ones, and standing still and
running ones, you know."
Gerry dimpled in a friendly way.
This sounded delicious to the Mascot; in spite of the rather superior
looks of Mona and Rene, Betty's eyes danced at the thought. If she
had known how very real and unexpectedly thrilling the tracking
expedition at the end of the week would turn out to be, it is likely
that she would not have longed for it quite as whole-heartedly and
delightedly as she did.
CHAPTER X
LOST!--THE CUP!
Betty was wrought up to a fever of energy.
She and Gerry were gardening; but for once the gardens seemed tame.
With the idea at the back of her mind of the tracking expedition to
take place in less than a week's time, the Mascot felt anxious to be
up and doing instantly. Gerry had come out for half an hour's
gardening, but Betty was firmly of opinion that the said half-hour
could be put to a better use.
"Gerry, do you think we could practise steps in that sandy
place--like you said last night?"
"Now?" Gerry looked up from a serious investigation of some small
Shirley poppy seedlings. "Oh, I don't know. We could do that later,
perhaps. But Nancy was saying to Eve at breakfast that she had seen
three slugs in the pink clump. And these poppies are next door to
the pinks. Slugs are awful if they start eating up seedlings, and
these poppies are so lovely when they're out." Gerry returned to her
work.
"But--" Betty strove hard to be patient as she explained--"I do so
badly want to practise. Not being allowed to read the blue book yet,
you see, I'm not sure, till you explain, exactly how to start."
"All right, then," returned Gerry. "We'll put in ten minutes at the
end of my gardening time. But not any more, I'm afraid. You see,
there's the Cup. We don't want to lose it."
"Lose the Cup!" cried Betty indignantly. "As though I wasn't just as
awfully anxious as anybody." For Gerry's speech seemed to her
singularly inopportune. Her request had been uttered just because
she felt so tremendously keen, so she told herself, not to shame the
Daisies by her ignorance. To please Sybil, and not to disgrace her
patrol, she must--even if she were only a raw recruit--have a few
ideas in her mind as to how to track and spoor before next Saturday
came round.
"Well." Gerry sat down on her heels and looked at her. "I didn't
mean anything horrid. I meant that we might lose it, you see, if----"
"If what?" asked Betty.
"It's only ours till Midsummer Day," said Gerry slowly, growing a
little pink. "Then we might easily lose it if--" She spoke rather
soberly, but on seeing the perturbed expression on her friend's face
she broke off. "Let's start the spooring practice now, then," she
said; "and then you can go on practising by yourself, and I'll come
back and do gardening afterwards." She rose to her feet.
"I'd rather--rather anything happened," said Betty vigorously,
joining her friend as they walked down the grassy slope between the
gardens, "than that we should lose the Cup. So why----"
Gerry tried to explain why. "We've tried to be the best patrol all
this year, and we _are_ likely to keep it," she said, "unless
something dreadful happens. We all know that, and the other patrols
know it too. We're top in badges, you see; and we got top marks at
the display last term. And those things count. Miss Carey gives the
decision, of course, at the end, though. And even if we _had_ got
best marks, and best badges, and best reports, yet we shouldn't
deserve it--at least I'm sure Miss Carey would say so, and it would
be true--if----"
"If what?" said Betty for the third time.
"Well, I'm trying to say it. If just because we were near it we got
slack about little things like slugs," finished up Gerry thankfully.
"There, that's what I mean. They're big things, really, even though
they're little; because they'd mean that we _were_ slack. So----"
Betty nodded. She did see. "Let's go back and garden, then, instead
of tracking," suggested she resignedly.
"No, I don't believe Sybil would tell us to. Not a bit. Of course
you want to know about spooring. It's only that it's sort of fussy
and not Benedicky to race off to something else when you've got
started on a job." Gerry was rather red as she spoke. "Here's the
sandy patch," she added with relief, "behind these bushes. A bird's
been walking on it already. See?--the mark of his claws, I mean.
Well, we'll practise our own now, and then you will see the
difference."
The occupation began.
But all the time Gerry was coaching her in the earliest rudiments of
spooring, Betty's face wore an exceptionally solemn look. Her friend
had been more "Guidy" than herself, as she expressed it. She was
still "helter-skelter," as Sybil had called her on the first night,
and though she was beginning to grasp the true meaning underlying the
school motto, and to come under the influence of the quiet, steady
atmosphere of St. Benedick's, yet, in her well-meaning anxiety to be
up and doing, Betty seemed sometimes to frustrate her own efforts
after all.
It had been like that at home sometimes. She had not yet forgotten
the results of a certain day's zeal, when she had raced busily into
her father's patients' waiting-room to pacify the screaming baby of a
poor woman patient, and had thus brought the germ of scarlet fever
upon herself and even upon the luckless twins. Dad had spoken no
word of blame; but Ann, the general servant, who had had so many
extra duties thrust upon her by the results of Betty's act of energy,
had had her say. Also, as Betty knew, it was "the scarlet fever"
which had caused Dad's appeal to Auntie, who was governessing in
India, to come home and help them. There had been other well-meant
actions, too, which had come to naught.
Here at school, of course, the whole scheme of things had been so
utterly new to Betty until recently that her energies had remained
under control. But she _had_ trespassed into Witch's Wood
unthinkingly; and to-day Eve _had_ informed her that her efforts in
the gardening direction were too vigorous and forceful, and must be
confined within certain limits laid down by the senior Guides. Also,
to-day, Gerry had told her not to fuss.
"I tell you what," continued Gerry, suddenly breaking in on her
thoughts--"you know quite enough now to go on alone. Practise
running and then walking, and compare the marks you leave. And then
think out other things to do for yourself. I'm going back to those
slugs now; you don't mind, do you?"
"No," said Betty thoughtfully. "And I'll come back presently myself
and do slugs too."
But when at last, after an interval of about half an hour, Betty did
return, it was to find that Gerry's gardening time was over and her
friend gone. The slugs, too, seemed gone, owing to Gerry's careful
search, and Betty, being now restricted by Eve in her activities,
found herself with time on her hands and to spare.
"I'd rather do anything than lose the Cup on Midsummer Day," she said
half-aloud, leaning over the fence.
The mere thought of the Cup caused an expedition to look at it
through the window of the Oak Room, where, on the first day of term,
she had first caught sight of it. She had peeped at it nearly every
day since then during prayers in the morning. She had been entrusted
with the rubbing-up of the trophy, too, under Sybil's direction,
every Saturday when the older Guides were at definite Guide work, and
the rubbing-up of the Cup was perhaps the most cherished of the
Mascot's jobs. As she peered through the Oak Room window a sudden
idea struck her.
"I'll clean it now," declared Betty. "On Saturday we'll be tracking
at Guide time, and it won't get done. I saw Sybil look up at it
to-day after roll-call as though she was wondering if it looked quite
shiny enough. Well, it _shall_ be. I know where the chamois is, and
I can do it out here. I cleaned it in the garden last week at
Guiding time while the rest were doing First Aid bandaging."
It seemed a splendid way of using up time and superfluous energy, for
the garden seemed in no need of mothering, and Betty's whole heart
was centred just then in the Cup itself. She sat there, lost to the
world of everything, on the strip of grass between the gardens,
polishing away.
"Sybil said I did it pretty well last time. Well, I'll do it better
now," remarked she. "I'd not lose you for anything!" She gave it a
little motherly pat. "Oh, to _think_ that it only belongs to the
Daisies till Midsummer Day, and that then, perhaps, we'll lose it!"
She gave a sigh and surveyed her work from a distance.
"I'll put you back before the sun takes the glitter off you,"
remarked Betty, as though addressing one of the twins. Then she
broke off and rose hastily to her feet as, from the house, sounding
musically peremptory, came the note of the dinner-gong. Certainly
the time was no longer her own.
"_Oh!_" cried Betty in dismay. "Suppose I lose the patrol a mark!"
It took her but a moment, however, to place back the Cup through the
open window on the little ledge where its place was. Another moment
brought her flying into the school door, and a third brought her,
panting and still wiping powder from her hands, to join the end of
the line of girls. Only, however, to be sent straight back by
Stella--one of the prefects--to finish her toilet below.
"Betty Carlyle, your skirt is covered with some sort of powder. Go
back, please, and tidy yourself before you go into the dining-room."
It was a very flustered Betty who took her seat five minutes later at
the window table; and a quick look of surprise from the head of her
patrol as she had passed the round table in the middle of the room
where the prefects sat seemed the last straw. "And I was only
trying--" thought Betty unhappily.
"You've lost us a mark; you've lost us a mark. At least, if mascots
count, you have," remarked Rene at her side.
Mona's eyes from the other side of the table seemed to emphasize the
statement.
"If mascots counted!" Betty's cup felt as full as it could hold.
She turned to Gerry. But even Gerry had lost her dimples. "I say,"
she said in horror, "didn't you hear first bell? It's the very first
dining-room mark in the patrol, you know."
"Oh, I almost hope that mascots _don't_ count!" said Betty, almost in
tears.
Mutton and potatoes tasted like nothing on earth; so did the pudding.
And hasten slowly time spent under the trees had lost all its charm
that afternoon. Instead of sending her thoughts inquiringly over the
cottage in the wood, or remembering the fairy piper, or working up
stories to tell to the twins next holiday, Betty felt hot at the back
of her eyes, and a regular lump of misery at the back of her throat.
She had been too helter-skelter again; and just when she'd been so
keen to help. She hadn't "hastened slowly"; she had "snatched" after
helping, and so the helping hadn't been worth anything. And to be
the very first one to bring a dining-room mark to the patrol! What
would Sybil think of her?--the look in Sybil's eyes had shamed her
badly enough. And she was to have brought the patrol luck! And
now-- Betty's thoughts raced miserably on through the whole long
hour.
It was at the end of the hour that the terrible thing happened.
Unexpectedly. To the surprise of the juniors still resting under the
shade of one of the old trees, it was Sybil herself who left the
school doors and crossed the grass to summon them. When she reached
the place, although there had been no hurry in her step, and although
her tone as she spoke was quiet and unflurried, there was an anxious
look in her blue eyes.
"Time," she said slowly. Then, standing still on the grass facing
the group under the trees, she spoke again. "I want to ask you all
something," said Sybil, "before you get up. Has any one of you
touched the Guide Cup? It is missing from its stand in the Oak Hall."
CHAPTER XI
WITH SYBIL, IN THE WOOD
Betty had never spent such a day. It had been bad enough to have to
blurt out before everybody the fact that she herself must certainly
have been the last girl to have seen the Cup. It was worse to see
the frank and absolute amazement in Sybil's face at her words.
"_You_--Betty?"
"I--" began Betty nervously. Her fingers were flying by this time;
she could hardly bring out the words; and the sight of Sybil standing
quietly before her made her somehow feel all the more what a
harum-scarum helter-skelter she was.
"I only meant--I mean, I didn't mean--" she floundered. Oh, if Sybil
would only let her explain the matter all by herself instead of
standing, as she was, in the midst of a group of junior Guides all
staring incredulously at her.
But the head of the Daisies did _not_ make the matter easier for her
in that way. Her eyes were grave and quiet; but the blue of them
looked stern, Betty thought. "Speak slowly; there is no hurry. Why
did you touch the Cup at all without leave?" said Sybil.
"It was to help. I mean--I was cleaning it. I took it out in the
gardens. I put it back. I _know_ I did," began Betty in a quivery
voice.
At this juncture, on account of the quiver, Dad would have put his
arm round her and called her "Bet, pet," and she would have felt
better at once. Sybil, who _could_ be kind and sweet, as Betty knew,
did none of these things.
"You took the Guide Cup, then, from the shelf without asking, Betty?
And cleaned it in the garden without leave? It did not occur to you,
then, that the Cup is the property of every one of the Guides, and
that we are the patrol responsible for it this year. As I am head of
that patrol, you should have asked _me_."
"I just thought--" Betty would have welcomed a yawning cavern if it
would only kindly have opened its jaws to receive her.
But it did not. She was left, for the first time in her life,
perhaps, to bear the brunt of her helter-skelter ways as she stood
for several moments surrounded by the junior Guides of the company,
and with the full consciousness of Sybil's cool, quiet gaze fixed
upon her while she waited thoughtfully without speaking a word.
Then--"You took a very great responsibility on yourself, Betty
Carlyle, in doing what you did," said the head. "I am afraid that
indirectly your action may be at the root of the loss of the Cup."
She spoke in tones as cold as the glance from her blue eyes. Then
she turned and began to cross the lawn again.
But even as she went she seemed to recollect something, and for one
instant turned again. "All of you juniors will go at once, please,"
she said, "and get ready for games. As I have kept you back for a
moment it will be best, I think, for you not to waste time now in
talking while you change your shoes, but to go straight to the field.
Gerry and Betty, will you collect the rugs before you go?"
It was kind of Sybil. Even at that moment, even while Betty was in
the direst disgrace that had ever fallen upon her, the head girl had
realized--even while blaming the culprit--her state of mind. By this
arrangement Betty gained a few minutes' breathing-space, with Gerry
her friend at her side, before joining the rest. The Mascot bent
over her task with a crimson face.
_Would_ Gerry say anything comforting?
But Gerry was apparently too much overwhelmed to speak. It was only
when, carrying the rugs between them, they had nearly reached the
house, that Betty summoned up courage to gulp out an inquiry.
"Gerry," she whispered in a panting voice, "I didn't mean anything.
I truly thought I was helping."
Gerry said nothing.
"I--Sybil doesn't think I--_took_ it, does she?" said poor Betty.
"_Took_ it!" almost shouted Gerry in an outraged tone. "_Took_ it!
Do you mean to say that Sybil--or any Guide--would think that of any
other? You may be only a mascot," went on Gerry, "but you've been at
Benedick's a month, and you ought to know."
"Oh." Betty was half-relieved but almost half-frightened, too, by
the vehemence of her friend's tone. "Why----?"
It was with Gerry's next words that the full force of the situation
struck her. "It's not that Sybil thinks that; she couldn't. We none
of us could. And you couldn't have done it; none of us could. But
the Cup was taken by some one, I suppose, who saw you with it. A
tramp, perhaps, creeping in while we were at dinner. And the Cup is
in the Daisies' charge this year; and our patrol is responsible for
it."
"But it will be found. It couldn't have gone far. I put it back
quite carefully though I was hurrying, so it couldn't have slipped
off the ledge, or I would have thought it was just that. Gerry, you
don't mean that, if it isn't found, the patrol will lose _marks_?"
"_Marks!_" repeated Gerry almost scornfully. "As though marks were
everything!" She stopped.
The others were not so reticent. On the arrival of the two
last-comers on the cricket field the excited looks of the players
were hard to bear. When the game was over, too, and they all trooped
back through the grounds and on to the terrace for tea, the same
subject was on every lip.
"Is the Cup found?"
It was not, as Doron, prefect in charge of the meal, told them all
tersely. She did not encourage conversation in the matter, but it
would have been as easy for her to stem a mill-stream as to quench
the curiosity of the juniors. Cowslips, Foxgloves, Buttercups,
Daisies--there was horror in every eye. Then it _was_ gone. It
hadn't just slipped down or anything when Betty--Every one of them
stopped short at the utterance of her name. Not one of them blamed
her in words. But there was a look of horrified amazement in their
eyes as they gazed at her, which was worse, Betty felt, to bear than
anything at all. A greater "worst" came, however, when tea was over.
She was collecting her goods and chattels in a corner of the study.
Her eyes were filled with tears by this time, and she had found it
difficult for that reason to distinguish between the names of the
subjects written on the labels of her books. She was still,
perforce, then, gropingly trying to mop her eyes when--the rest
having found their way preparation-roomwards--two prefects entered
the study for reasons of their own.
Doron and Sylvia talking together.
"I thought Sybil was taking on unnecessary trouble for herself by
adopting the child as mascot."
It was Sylvia.
"Quixotic, I call it. Especially when the Daisies were so keen to
hold the Cup for the second year, and a newcomer might easily have
pulled them down. Well, they've lost it now, I'm afraid; and even
though it will go to the Foxgloves instead, yet Hilda was saying that
it _is_ hard on Sybil."
"Lost the Cup; yes, in two senses." It was Doron's voice. "I
suppose you are right. Miss Carey could not overlook it, I should
think. She would say, I expect, that even though the child isn't
enrolled yet, Sybil should have had more control over her."
The said "child" suddenly appeared--choking, speechless, rising from
the lowest shelf but attempting to face the two. "I--" began Betty.
"Go and take your place in the preparation-room," said Sylvia in
level tones. "We did not know you were there," she added quietly,
"or we should not have said what we did in your hearing, of course.
Still, you must know it some time."
They had said she was to go to the preparation-room: they expected
her to obey, of course; but Betty couldn't. Saddled even though she
was with books of every description, she took a flying headlong race
down the corridor and into the cloakrooms behind. Then she flung
down her impedimenta and hurried breathlessly miserable into the
garden. She must get away; she must. Up the green strip between the
gardens into the school wood behind she went, and flung herself down
under the trees.
[Illustration: And Sybil was seated beside her among the bracken.]
She had lost the Cup! Even if it were found, yet she had still lost
it in another way to the Daisy patrol! The prefects had said so.
She, their mascot, who had been taken on by Sybil in spite of the
fact that she might ruin their chances. And she had done this! As
she lay there face down in the bracken and blue-bells, life seemed
unhappier than it had ever seemed before. It was not until she had
sobbed till she was weary and weak that she fell asleep.
It was from a medley of dreams that she was roused. She had been
dreaming of the piper and the cottage in the wood; and that the
fairies were guarding the Cup; and that the patrol had adopted a
fairy as a mascot instead of herself. She gave a little sob as she
woke up, however, and as she did so she heard a voice.
"Oh, poor little thing!" said the voice. "Wake up."
It was Sybil's voice, and Sybil was seated beside her among the
bracken. It may have been the first waking sight of her that had
given the Mascot the fairy dream, so she thought suddenly; because,
with a background of blue-bells and green trees, Sybil, sitting there
crowned with her halo of corn-coloured hair, and with the old kind
look in her eyes again, might have been, to Betty's eyes anyhow, a
most beautiful fairy princess.
"I--" began Betty, sitting up and rubbing her eyes; "I heard what
they said; and it's true. And I--" She began to cry again.
"I know what you heard," said Sybil's voice, "for they told me. They
told me, too, that they were sorry that you heard. Well, in one way,
Sylvia is right; but in another way she was not. Betty, listen.
Even although, just because of your helter-skelter ways, it seems
that we may lose the Cup for the patrol, yet I shall never be sorry
we took you as mascot." Sybil's voice was quiet, and felt like cool,
refreshing springs to Betty's thirsty heart.
"Why?" whispered Betty, turning tear-stained eyes on the head girl.
"Just because you came to us to be trained to be a true Guide; and
if, in your learning, we have to help you to buy your experience,
we'll do it gladly, because we're your fellow-Guides," said Sybil.
"You'll learn more by this, I'm sure, than in any other way. Well,
that will be knowledge gained by all of us because you're a part of
the patrol. Betty, do you understand?"
Sybil bent down and kissed her.
And as Sybil kissed her, Betty knew one thing; and that was that some
day, even if it took a whole lifetime of trying, she would hope to be
like Sybil herself, and to help other would-be Guides in just the
same way to try again. She got up without a word and smoothed back
her hair.
"Go straight to the dormitory," said Sybil in a different tone. "I
guessed you might be here, so I came to see. It is nearly bedtime,
and I will ask Nurse if you may have something in bed instead of
supper. Don't fuss any more."
Betty went.
She was in bed when the rest came up. Perhaps Sybil had spoken to
them also; perhaps not; Betty never knew. But at any rate they began
to talk to each other, and did not trouble her to join in.
"There's one thing certain and sure," said Mona, "that there'll be
some reason now for that tracking expedition next Saturday----"
Betty fell asleep while the discussion was still going on.
CHAPTER XII
THE TRACKING EXPEDITION
A week had passed. Saturday had come, and the Cup was not yet found.
It had been, perhaps, the most sobering week that Betty had ever
spent in her life. For, after the meeting with Sybil in the school
wood, she had taken the head girl's words to heart and had tried to
go about everyday things as quietly and evenly as she could and in an
everyday manner. The other juniors might look at her curiously now
and again as though wondering whether Betty had forgotten. But she
had not. At almost every moment of the day she remembered that her
helter-skelter ways and lack of control had more than probably been
the cause of the loss of the Cup. But she was "trying not to fuss,"
for she had learned a lesson which she would never forget, and she
had formulated, too, in the wood the preceding evening, a principle
that she would never lose sight of through all her schooldays to
come. She meant to work on and on, "hastening slowly" until some day
she saw herself, like Sybil, helping some smaller Guide than herself
to higher courage and greater endeavour. She would never forget
Sybil's words to her in the wood: they went to hold a place--though
the head girl certainly did not guess it--among the "secret beautiful
things" in Betty's heart which might never be spoken about to any one
at all.
Not that, after that evening, Betty had come much into contact with
the head girl. She had barely met Sybil again that week at all.
Only at meal-times in the distance, and during the head girl's duty
hours as prefect, did the two meet. And to all outward appearances
Betty's life went on just as before the loss of the Cup; for though
naturally its loss was the chief subject of every conversation,
nobody connected her name with the loss, nor suggested by look or
word that there might be any such connection. It was not until after
some days had passed that she herself dared to broach the subject,
which was always uppermost in her mind, to Gerry, her friend.
"Gerry, do they think some one saw me cleaning it, and then stole it?"
Gerry nodded. "Well, it does seem like that. All the girls have
talked it over. It couldn't very well have gone any other way. Rene
suggested a jackdaw, but that's silly, of course, for the Cup is too
heavy. But it could easily have been lifted down from the shelf by
any one who climbed in from the wood. And if any one saw you sitting
there and cleaning it, and then saw you put it back--" Gerry stopped
and looked awkward.
"But--" Betty spoke humbly--"but oh, I know, of course, that I should
have asked permission, and that I didn't. But, Gerry, nobody ever
trespasses in the school wood. What should bring them there just
that one day? Nobody would dare to because of Witch's Wood being so
near. So it does seem strange."
"I know." Gerry nodded agreement. "Miss Carey told the police,
though, and some of them looked in the wood. There were traces, I
heard Doron say, as though some one had been there. 'Sign,' you
know. And they think that a tramp must have been resting there, and
probably that he was a stranger and didn't know the silly stories
about Witch's Wood. It couldn't possibly be a villager, for none of
them would dare to."
"It does seem like that," sighed Betty.
There was nothing for it after that but just to "keep on keeping on,"
and to keep on hoping against hope too, though the chances of the
Cup's return seemed now very slight. With the near approach of
Saturday, however, the spirits of the dormitory juniors rose.
"It's terribly appropriate just to be happening to have a tracking
expedition," remarked Mona. "Suppose--just suppose we found the Cup!"
"Hidden in a hole by a tramp, d'you mean?" suggested Rene.
"Yes; or something like that. Wouldn't it be simply glorious to
bring the tramp to justice! Just like a book. We might get a Guide
medal from headquarters, I should think."
"You wouldn't. It sounds terribly un-Guidy to say that it's glorious
to put tramps into prison," put in Gerry. She turned to Betty for
support.
"You mean friends of all the world?" said Betty shyly. "Yes, I think
so too."
"Well, I must say!" Mona flared up at once. "All I can tell you is,
then--and Rene thinks the same--that we two would do anything for the
sake of the patrol and for Sybil and everything. We'd do _anything_
to get the Cup back. And if Betty, of all people----"
"You know perfectly well that Betty's as keen to get it back as you
are," flared up Gerry in return.
A grim silence fell on the cubicles. Brushes could be heard in
vigorous use from the four corners of the room.
Matters were still rather strained and the subject was a chilly one
between the couples next day. Sybil, however, who with Eve--her
second--and Doris, Jean and Lilian, the older Guides of the patrol,
was to head the expedition, was certainly in no mood to notice petty
trifles such as Tenderfoot feuds. The patrol was marched out in
business-like fashion on to the moor, and the practice began.
Vigorous, practical, and to the point, was the scheme of the
afternoon's work. The Tenderfoots were taken in hand first by the
captain herself, and received a preliminary lesson in stalking and
sign-reading.
"Red Indians are wonders," said Sybil; "there are no tracking secrets
hidden from them. They will lie in wait for hours; and the crumpling
of a leaf or the shade of difference in a sound means everything to
them sometimes. Their food depends on their scouting, you see, and
their family's food. They learn 'stalking' because they would die if
they did not understand how to stalk. In our country, too, keepers
and others look for 'sign' from morning till night. In the war,
you'll remember, scouting played a tremendous part."
"I say, Sybil, gipsies leave 'sign' behind," put in Mona, as they all
squatted on the grass.
"Yes, they do. _Patrin_, they call it. And the gipsies can follow
each other just because of it. t helps them more than we'd
understand, I expect, since they are roaming all the time. I've seen
broom-making gipsies sitting on the backs of their caravans and
throwing down sometimes a bundle of twigs, and marking their road
along from one town to another in that way. A regular trail is left
behind; but only just plainly enough trailed, of course, for a
watchful person to see."
"The ones that camp on the moor here make baskets, you know," put in
Mona.
"Well, we are going to do something in the _patrin_ line this
afternoon," put in Sybil. "It's much the same thing. You must all
learn by following some definite clues, for we don't want one of you,
even a mascot, to get lost in a wood again. Eve and Lilian are going
to lay down 'sign,' or _patrin_, or whatever you like to call it, and
you four are to follow the scent. They have started already and are
laying trail, and you must try to follow on, after they have had a
fair start, and track them. Try to track the way they went by
noticing any scraps of 'sign' they may leave; not only over the next
two ridges of the moor, but all the way, try to keep exactly on their
trail. It is a very simple test, and you may have an hour for it.
Then come back here and bring reports. Afterwards, Eve will go over
the ground with you and tell you what you have missed and where you
went wrong. Remember to 'hasten slowly'; you will miss a lot,
possibly, by hurrying."
The four started off.
It was glorious. The sun blazed down from overhead; the grass was
baking underfoot. Betty's eyes were wide with eagerness as she and
Gerry made their way off together. Eve was even now returning behind
the second ridge: and they were to bring back an account of every bit
of "sign" she had left _en route_. The first "scent" was a
footprint, imbedded deeply, and evidently on purpose, in a piece of
upturned turf. Gerry, Mona, and Rene discovered it in chorus.
"Pointing east. She's gone that way. Is it Eve's or Lilian's?"
"Lilian is wearing tackets in her boots and Eve isn't, I noticed.
The footprint must be Eve's."
On they went.
There followed, with a yard or two between, more and more traces of
"sign"--a tiny bit of paper crumpled up, which proved to be half of
an envelope addressed to Lilian; a tiny scrap of patrol ribbon; more
footprints; a lock of Eve's hair!
On and on went the practice. Suddenly, just as the top of the second
ridge was reached, Mona, who was a pace ahead, gave a little shout.
"Rene, I say."
"What is it?" called Gerry.
But the others were whispering eagerly. They were bending down and
didn't answer.
"It's a _patrin_. It must be a real one. A bundle of sticks
pointing this way," said Mona at last. "Rene says she is sure she
saw more of it farther back, but she thought it was some of Eve's
'sign.' Well, _this_ can't be, I'm certain. It must be the _patrin_
of some gipsies on the moor."
Gerry and Betty hung eagerly over the "sign."
There was no doubt of it. A little bundle of rushes still fresh and
green lay there.
"And close to the moor path," shouted Mona. "It was flung here from
a passing caravan. There are marks of the wheels too, and the
horse's feet."
"I say," Gerry called after them, "you're leaving the ridge."
But the excitement was by this time intense. Mona and Rene were wild
with eagerness.
"We'll have to. We're going to follow. Suppose they've got the Cup!
Sybil said to come back in an hour, and it's not half an hour yet.
If you'll come along we can all go together, and be back by the time
the others do. If we run back to ask leave, she'll probably not be
there; and we shall never catch up with the caravan."
"But what are you going to do? And why should they have the Cup?"
demanded Gerry. "And besides, it's a practice; and we've got Eve's
'sign' to follow."
"'_Why?_' It's more than likely that they've got it," almost stamped
Mona. "And if you don't care about the Cup, Rene and I _do_! I must
say, after last night, any one would think that you two----"
Mona was off.
"I'm not going," said Gerry, sitting down on the ridge. "Betty,
you're not to either. We might go back to Sybil and ask; but she's
given us the orders, and----"
The couples parted company.
But there was little enjoyment in searching after "sign" when Mona
and Rene had gone. The others heard several shouts of excitement as
two more bunches of the _patrin_ were picked up; then the adventurous
pair disappeared from view.
"I'm perfectly sure," said Gerry, after almost half an hour more had
gone, as she and Betty were just preparing to slip over the ridge,
"that they ought not to have gone. But----"
They had been seated for a while on the topmost ridge, counting up
their "sign" discoveries in preparation for their return. It was
just as they had finished that they heard the sound of a step behind
them.
"Oh, you's the other two young ladies, is yer?" said a voice. Betty
and Gerry turned. "Well, an' I'll trouble you to come along."
As they stared with amazement their gaze fell upon a gipsy boy, who
stood there, tall and handsome, but with an insolent lowering look
upon his face.
CHAPTER XIII
LITTLE FRIEND OF ALL THE WORLD
"But I don't think we can!" said Gerry, staring. "You see, we're not
allowed beyond this ridge. We're--tracking."
"'Tracking,' is it!" The lad's face grew surlier. "Well, an' it's
you, then, sure enough, as is the other young ladies, and my Dad
arsks you to come along. If you's tracking, you's on the wrong
scent, he'd have you know. An' 'e'll tell you so himself. You can
jest come along an' hear what 'e's got to say if you's them as tries
to fix blame on folk as lives honest."
"But--" began Gerry again.
"Well, if you likes to say 'ere and now as you's not tracking, then
it's jest them two young ladies up there as is in it," remarked the
boy, softening a little at the amazed look on their faces.
"Gerry, he doesn't understand," began Betty. "Perhaps--" But Gerry
broke in.
"We're having a tracking practice. Not tracking people; at least, of
course--" she broke off. "The others are only practising too."
"That they _isn't_." The boy's voice grew louder. "Following
travelling folkses; that's what they's adoing, and picking up their
travelling signs all unpolite, and arsking them about who stole cups
and all!" There was no mistaking the outraged tone in the lad's
voice.
"Oh _dear_!" Gerry broke out in a distracted voice. She turned to
Betty. "We'll have to go. Perhaps we can explain. They've got into
dreadful trouble evidently. We _must_!"
"All right," agreed Betty, feeling her knees shaking under her.
But she felt that Gerry was right. They certainly must go, though
the prospect was an uninviting, not to say a terrifying, one. The
others had plainly got into some trouble with the gipsies of a
caravan, that was certain, and they were being detained. Perhaps
Gerry _would_ be able to explain if they went. And anyway, they
could not leave Mona and Rene there alone. She got up as Gerry did,
and followed her friend's lead.
"It's worse enough," remarked the lad in a less surly tone as they
did so, "bein' looked down by the Romany folk what says they are the
true folks of the road, and calls us non-such and mumpers. Mumpers
belike we is, but we work fair an' honest fer a living, and the
police passes us civil and knows us for such. An' when two young
ladies comes after us callin' and arsking ef we's seen the silver cup
what's advertised up in Woodhurst Police Station as stolen--" he
broke off in a mutter.
"Oh dear!" said Gerry again, but _sotto voce_ this time. Here was
indeed a pickle.
"'You can jest step back and track _them_ then, Andy!' so my Dad ses,
'an' we'll show 'em whether we've got stole cups on board. The other
young ladies ses as there was two more of 'em a-tracking. Well,
bring 'em along,' ses Dad. 'If so be as we's got to turn this here
caravan back to the police station we'll do it, and face the young
ladies, yes, wiv the troof. The police gives us a civil word when
they meets us, which is more than some young ladies does!'"
"It's perfectly dreadful," remarked Gerry to Betty. "It's quite
plain what's happened. They've hailed the caravaners and offended
them. And--oh, why, here they all are!"
[Illustration: The moor road where a caravan was standing.]
Just over the third ridge they came in sight of the moor road again
where a caravan was standing. The horse between the shafts was
munching grass unconcernedly; but the driver--a grizzled, middle-aged
man--was standing in an aggressive attitude still eyeing a pair of
rather woebegone maidens.
"I say, here you are!" began Mona indignantly, as the others arrived.
"Has he brought you? I wish you would explain that----"
"It's explainings _I_ wants," burst out the owner of the caravan
angrily. "Folks may be poor, but they's honest too; and they's got
their feelings. And when two young ladies--" the plaint began again.
"Mumpers we may be called by some, but we earns a living fair and
square and honest in summer time by travelling. An' the police
treats us civil; and here we's tracked down by young ladies what
calls us up fer stolen cups!"
"They didn't mean--" began Gerry.
But Mona's angry protestations, and Rene's tears, and Gerry's
beseechments were of little avail. As for Betty, she stood by
feeling even more useless than the rest.
For it was evident that these were a party of proud and respectable
working-people who had been wounded in their most vulnerable part by
Mona's and Rene's suspicious-sounding inquiries. The burden of the
older man's speech was the same as that of his son's. If they were
accused of stealing silver cups by young ladies who had evidently
come out on purpose of tracking, well, they would turn round and go
straight back to the Woodhurst Police Station, taking the young
ladies in tow! "To show as we're fair and square and honest, and
that the police there knows us fine and treats us civil," repeated
the man. "Not to say that the Weyhurst police knows us too, where we
comes from!"
"'Weyhurst!'" repeated Betty in a surprised squeak.
For Weyhurst was the town where she lived.
"'Weyhurst!' I ses and means," said the older man severely, evidently
scenting further suspicions in Betty's surprised squeak. "They knows
me fair and square there, from Weyhurst. And if we's being tracked,
I'll show every one of you, down Woodhurst here, w'ere we passed
through this morning, and was treated civil by the police, whether
Andrew Grimes--licensed travelling broom-seller--ain't respected by
all atween Weyhurst and Woodhurst, him an' his wife Anna Grimes too,
wot is travelling in this here caravan at this very minute."
The said Anna Grimes put a tidy head through the caravan door as
though to prove the truth of her husband's remarks. She was a decent
middle-aged woman, but her face was set in angry lines.
"An' as I ses, to be sure," she broke out, "we's enough trouble to
make an honest living these days without young ladies a-tracking us
down, and then going back, perhaps, an' sending police after us for
cups. As I ses--" She broke off suddenly with a cry of surprise.
"Dad, who've you got _'ere_?" she called out in a different voice.
"Why----!"
"Why--!" remarked Betty, too, at that instant.
For something in the look of Anna Grimes's face was familiar, though
what the familiarity consisted in she could not for a minute or two
find out. The woman's face was somehow connected in her mind with
home; and something unpleasant; and--oh yes, with a _baby_!
It was at this instant that the woman, who had disappeared inside the
caravan for a moment after uttering the exclamation, appeared in view
again, panting, and made her way down the steps carrying a small
child in her arms.
"Dad! Well, I never, Dad!" she called excitedly, addressing her
surprised husband, but keeping her eyes on the still more surprised
Betty. "Sure this is the little young lady wot I's always told you
of wot came running into doctor's waiting-room and kisses the baby.
Brought him luck, too, she did, as I've always said; seeing as he got
through the fever so easy, and--" The angry lines of her face were
all smoothed away. She wore a comfortable smile as she approached
the girls.
[Illustration: "Sure, this is the little young lady wot I's always
told you of."]
The "fever!" At that word Betty remembered everything. The woman,
Mrs. Grimes, whose home her husband had said was at Weyhurst, was the
very woman who had brought the screaming baby into Dad's
waiting-room, and to whose aid she had hurried unasked in a fit of
zeal, only to earn for herself and the twins a legacy of the said
fever for which, as Dad had discovered, the child had been sickening
at the time. The action had seemed to be fraught with unmitigated
disaster at the time, but now----!
The whole caravan atmosphere had changed; smiles took the place of
frowns. "It's a mistake, Dad, that's what it is, Dad," said the
woman. "You've been too 'asty-like. Sure, the doctor's young lady
wot kissed the baby she wouldn't go for to----"
"Then what for do the rest of 'em--?" began Mr. Grimes, but in a very
different tone of voice.
"Explain, Betty. He'll listen to you," urged Mona.
Thus adjured, the Mascot, feeling at the moment how very little she
really knew about Guiding, did try to explain. "Yes, I'm Betty
Carlyle, and I do remember the baby, and I'm very glad he got well,"
she said shyly; "and I wouldn't, and not one of us would, ever think
you'd taken our Cup. We're Guides, and we're friends of all the
world, you see--at least we'd like to be--and if we've done anything
un-Guidy, we're very sorry," she finished up.
"It was us that did; not you and Gerry. And we are awfully sorry,"
put in Mona, addressing Mr. Grimes.
"Well, you can't say no more than that same. And it's only fair and
square to take your word," remarked the caravan owner, extending a
horny fist.
In ten minutes the entire party were the best of friends. Apologies
had been exchanged between Mona and Rene and the Grimes family;
kisses had been exchanged between the Guides and the baby. ("There's
not a mite of risk, little Miss Carlyle, dear, not this time anyways;
an' you can tell the doctor, your Dada, with our duty, as how you met
us an' the baby was doing fine; fer a true friend he's been!") The
caravan started again upon its way, while the Guides, still waving in
response to salutations with a whip, turned their course towards the
arranged meeting-place with the head girl.
"I say, we've got to tell Sybil," remarked Mona. "And we'll deserve
anything for letting down the Guides." They marched gravely along
four abreast without saying a word for a while.
It was Rene who suddenly, as they reached the last ridge, voiced the
thoughts of herself and Mona. "I say, it was wonderful about you and
the baby," she remarked, turning to Betty. "If it hadn't been that
you'd been so friend-to-all-the-worldy, you know--and even before
you'd ever heard of Guides, too!--we might have had a much worse
time!"
"Yes," agreed Mona.
Betty said nothing, but her heart gave a jump of joy.
"She's proved that she's a real true Mascot anyway, hasn't she?"
remarked Gerry loyally.
"Rather," agreed the others.
Betty's heart suddenly felt lighter than it had felt for days.
CHAPTER XIV
THE PIONEER PICNIC
The days had gone by since the tracking expedition; but nothing had
been heard of the Cup. The junior Daisies had walked warily,
however, since then--the unfortunate result of their excessive zeal
having been a lesson to each one of the four girls concerned.
Perhaps to Mona and Rene particularly, however; for, until that
afternoon, they had been rather inclined to look down a pair of
superior noses at the Mascot whose unthinking ways had more than
probably brought about the loss of the Cup. Now they themselves had
brought trouble by their own lack of thought; trouble, too, out of
which the Mascot had, by a kind of miracle, delivered them. Sybil,
when the account of the afternoon's adventures was duly rendered to
her, spared no sympathy at all for the delinquents concerned.
"You went after the caravan and asked--" Her voice sounded
incredulously cold. "You _dared_ to?"
"Not if they'd stolen it, Sybil. Honest Injun, we didn't ask them
that. They just took it that way!"
"And wouldn't you have 'taken it that way' if you had been in their
place? It comes to exactly the same thing. I don't wonder that
their pride was hurt. Have you no imagination at all? Miss Carey
must know what you have told me, of course. It's just unthinkable
that Guides should have done it--even Tenderfoots. Yes, as you say,
Betty has proved herself a mascot this afternoon. It was very
strange, in one way, that she should have happened to know them; but
it's not strange in another. She might have known them, and yet--"
Sybil stopped. "Do you see what I mean?" she said.
"You mean that it wasn't because they'd seen her before, but because
she'd been so Guidy to the baby that made them feel friendly," put in
Gerry.
"That's exactly it, Gerry. Betty was 'Guidy,' as you called it,
then--even before she knew us, or joined the Daisies. It's nice to
think that her enrolment as a real Tenderfoot will not be long in
coming now."
Sybil gave Betty a very kind smile, for she knew, as did all Betty's
other acquaintances, that the Mascot was straining every nerve and
working with all her heart and soul towards the moment of her
investiture, which had been arranged for on the next Midsummer Day.
That Midsummer Day was also Cup Day Betty, knew as well as the rest.
Midsummer Day was coming very close now, too, and it seemed likely
that there could be no tangible trophy at hand when the award took
place. The Daisies had all faced the fact that they must be passed
over as "best patrol" in favour of the Foxgloves, who ranked next in
order of merit; that next year the Foxglove patrol must take first
place in Hall under the little empty ebony stand seemed only just and
fair. But they were working extra hard, every one of them; and if
Mona and Rene had forgotten once to "hasten slowly" during their
experience on the moor, that very experience had served as a lesson
in the Guide law which neither of them would forget.
Meanwhile work went on in classrooms and on the playing-fields, in
the Guide-rooms and in the gardens, and Midsummer drew nearer every
day.
Midsummer weather, too, prevailed, hot and glorious. "Fine weather
for the huts," was the universal morning greeting of certain senior
Guides. For one of the interests of the summer term at St.
Benedick's was the yearly erection of huts in the clearing in the
wood by any of the older Guides who had obtained permission to work
for their Pioneer badges.
"The clearing's kept specially for it," as Gerry told Betty. "None
of us go there. It takes them weeks and weeks to build them; for
they don't hurry through them, but just work at them when they're
free. Sybil got her Pioneer badge last year; but Eve of the Daisies,
and Jean, who's second in the Foxgloves, and Louise, who's a
Buttercup, are all working for their Pioneers this year. And when
the huts are ready there'll be a 'hut-warming.'"
"A hut-warming?" repeated Betty.
"Yes, and it's to be the Saturday before Mid-summer Day. That's
decided," Gerry informed her. "They're making a camp kitchen, too,
and on the night after the 'warming' the Pioneers are to be allowed
to camp there. Miss Drury's camping with them. It will be
tremendous fun for them, I should think; they're to cook their own
supper and breakfast next day, and act just like Robinson Crusoes.
I'm simply longing to be far enough on to work up for my Pioneer
badge!"
Betty certainly agreed that it sounded one of the "most thrilly" of
the badges, and looked forward with as much zest as the rest for the
Pioneer entertainment.
"If the weather--!" was the remark on everybody's lips during the
week preceding the great day.
But there was no "if" about the weather at all when Saturday
eventually arrived. The Pioneer hut-makers had spent an energetic
week. They had taken advice from Miss Drury and from older girls who
had pioneered before them; their camp kitchen's possibilities had
been secretly and privately tested; their huts had received all
finishing touches in good time. "The 'hut-warming' only lasts for
two hours--from four to six," as Gerry told Betty; "but it's
tremendous fun. They do everything, you see--baking the cakes and
all. It generally takes the whole two hours, though, just to eat the
meal because it's all such fun! And then--well, we don't stay very
long because they've got to arrange their night camp, and, of course,
they're not awfully experienced in the ways of things."
The "Pioneers," however, proved particularly brainy ones that year.
They advanced to meet their guests, each from her wigwam door,
dressed in Red Indian garments of their own fashioning and design,
and proceeded to provide a feast as pioneery as it was peculiar.
Instead of tea the guests were served with a beverage which the hosts
had prepared from nettles, and pronounced "absolutely non-poisonous
and much more pioneery." Wild strawberries and raspberries in
limited quantities figured on the menu, but the pièce de résistance
of the feast was the quantity of damper-cakes and bannocks cooked
over the embers of the fire. They might be slightly doughy in their
interiors and might cause the interior organs of the guests to feel
slightly doleful afterwards, but "it was worth it," as Gerry declared
to Betty on their way back, when the "hut-warming" was over and the
Guides were left to themselves for the night.
"Rather," agreed Betty, but in a very abstracted tone.
"What's wrong? Did you eat too many of them?" inquired Gerry
sympathetically. "I thought you suddenly seemed rather--well, glum!"
But Betty's "glumness" was not the result of damper-cakes, as she
proceeded to explain, though the explanation was not apparently easy
to make. "I say, Gerry," she burst out suddenly. "Look!" From her
pocket she produced a coloured object of a ribbony texture. "It was
in a bush," blurted out Betty. "Close to the Witch's Wood fence, you
know, where we were all sitting at tea. And I suddenly saw it, and
pulled it out."
"Why," said Gerry, staring, "one of the Daisies must have lost it.
It's a bit of our patrol ribbon."
"That's what I thought," burst in Betty; "but only just at first.
Look here, Gerry; listen. It may be that; but then it mayn't. You
see, it couldn't have been lost to-day, because it's been wet with
rain and all tousled, and looks as though it had been there for
weeks. And the Guides wouldn't push ribbon into a bush, and----"
"Well?" inquired Gerry, staring. "But even if not, I don't see----"
"It's tied in a bow, you see," went on Betty; "and----"
"Well?" inquired Gerry, staring still.
"And oh, Gerry, don't you see? Why, our patrol ribbon was tied on to
the Cup! In a bow, too; for I untied it and tied it up again that
morning when I cleaned it. And it seems to me--" Betty stopped.
"Betty!" Gerry was staring now in good earnest. "You don't think
that the Cup's hidden somewhere in the school wood, do you? Why, the
Guides have searched, you know."
"I don't know _what_ to think," said Betty, looking more miserable
than ever. "The fact is, Gerry, I'm beginning to wonder if I've done
something else silly and helter-skelter without meaning to. An idea
has just come to me. I've never told any one at all about it, but
now--" She stared from the ribbon to Gerry as though wondering what
to say next, or whether to leave something still unsaid.
"Whatever do you mean?" asked her friend.
CHAPTER XV
BETTY SHARES THE SECRET
"And the queer thing was, that we all of us saw it! Even Miss
Drury!" Eve was speaking to a circle of interested listeners on the
evening after the night camp in the wood.
"Weren't you nervous?" inquired some one.
"Nervous--pooh! Of the witch, you mean? That silly story! Why, it
wasn't till this morning that a single one of us even remembered it!"
"Did the light come from the haunted cottage, do you think?" put in
some one.
"I don't know anything except that there certainly _did_ seem to be a
moving light. I don't even know, for one thing, in what part of the
wood the cottage is supposed to be! I only know that I don't believe
in 'haunts' of any kind," continued the narrator briskly. "I daresay
it was a glow-worm of monstrous size, or a keeper, perhaps, on the
prowl. Whatever it was, we saw no more of it!"
"You forget the music!" put in one of the other Pioneers.
[Illustration: "There certainly _did_ seem to be a moving light."]
"Oh yes, we heard that too! We all sat up on our elbows and listened
to it. Like a flute playing. It probably came from the road, though
it sounded, certainly, as though it issued from Witch's Wood!" Eve
laughed. "Miss Drury said that if last night instead of to-night had
been Midsummer Eve we might have been in the thick of a fairy revel!
But it didn't keep us awake; we all floated off into deep slumber.
Perhaps it may have been a magic lullaby, for not one of us stirred
until Miss Drury fairly commanded us to wake this morning!" Eve
moved off. "Well, the Pioneering's over," remarked she; "and
Midsummer Day's to-morrow with--whatever it brings. I only wish it
could bring the Cup!"
There was no need for words; every one else was wishing the same wish
too. Everybody, strange to say, at that moment except Betty!
For the last scrap of Eve's sentence had not even been heard by her.
She was remembering with all her might and main the words that had
gone before. She stood speechless with surprise, still wondering,
for several moments after Eve had disappeared.
_What_ had Eve said? Had she _really_ said it? Could Betty's ears
by any chance have misled her? she asked herself. That the
pioneering Guides from their night camp had seen a light from Witch's
Wood! Also that they had heard the sound of flute-playing! Like a
fairy revel; like a magic lullaby, Eve had said. She had been only
laughing, of course; but could it be--oh, could it possibly be that
the magic was true?
For a certain suspicion had been dawning in Betty's imaginative mind
ever since yesterday. It had seemed too unlikely an idea, so she had
told herself at first, to be true, and she had decided not to take
any one into her confidence, not even Gerry, in case her ideas should
be laughed at as absurd. But now--well, she could not keep the idea
to herself any more. After supper on Sunday evenings the girls were
always free to walk about the grounds in couples until bedtime.
To-night Gerry was to be Betty's partner. After hearing what Eve had
just said, the Mascot could hardly wait until the after-supper-time
came.
"Gerry----!"
"Whatever is it?" inquired Gerry solicitously. That Betty's state of
mind was one of extreme anxiety about something or other had been
evident all through supper-time. She had eaten nothing and had
narrowly escaped an early dismissal to bed on account of her lack of
appetite. "Though perhaps the hour outside will do you as much good
as an extra hour in bed in this hot weather," as Nurse had conceded
at last. "No doubt you're excited about your investiture to-morrow."
"_Is_ it the investiture?" inquired Gerry now.
"It is, and it isn't. At least it isn't that really, except in so
far as that everything's so tremendously connected." Betty gave a
sigh. "Gerry, I've something to tell you. I almost told you when
you asked me last night; only I couldn't. I was afraid you
might--well--that you might laugh at me, you know. And that would
'take the bloom off' so, like Sybil said." Betty stopped.
"I don't know one bit what you mean; but I shan't laugh," said Gerry
quickly.
For even if Betty's story were to be a queer one, yet it couldn't be
exactly a laughable one, Gerry was sure from the look in her friend's
eyes. She listened without a word until the telling was through.
But by the time the story was done Gerry's expression of face had
changed from one of amazement to one of extreme incredulity. At its
last word she stood still and said nothing at all.
"You don't believe it?" burst out Betty.
"I don't see how I could. Betty, how could _any_ one? It seems so
impossible." Gerry's eyes were thoughtful. "Just because you found
that bit of patrol ribbon in the hedge which might possibly have come
off the Cup!"
"It did. It did. I recognized the bow," put in Betty.
"Well, even if it did, it needn't mean that the witch had taken the
Cup! Particularly when, after all, there isn't one--a witch, I mean!
How _could_ there be? Guides don't believe in such things!"
"I didn't say exactly a witch!" put in Betty vehemently. "I said the
magic that was there might have had something to do with the losing
of the Cup! You never saw the cottage, and I _did_!"
"I know," agreed Gerry. "And I must say I can't think why you didn't
mention it before, if you thought----"
"I didn't think; and I mean, I was trying to 'keep the bloom on';
because it all seemed so strange and lovely for magic to be keeping
the cottage so sweet and flowery. And I thought 'I shan't tell any
one'; and then the idea came to me afterwards that perhaps I oughtn't
to have stepped inside, and that the magic had punished me for
trespassing by taking away the Cup, you see," finished up Betty
lamely. "Oh, I know it sounds silly! I told you you would want to
laugh. And it _has_ 'taken the bloom off' to tell it," said Betty,
almost in tears. "But when the Pioneers did see a light in the wood,
and _did_ hear the fairy piper, why, I thought I ought--for the sake
of every one----"
"I'm not laughing," said Gerry; and she certainly wasn't. She was
staring straight at Betty as though she could make neither head nor
tail of her story. "As to going into Witch's Wood, though, to-night,
and looking in the cottage to see whether the Cup's there, you simply
_can't_ do that! And you would never get leave to do it, I'm sure,
if you asked. Truly, I do think it's all rather--well, far-fetched,"
she finished up, wrinkling her brows.
"Oh dear," Betty sighed. But in the light of her friend's
common-sensible remarks she was beginning to think how helter-skelter
again her imaginings must have been. After all, perhaps it was just
a coincidence that the Pioneers had heard music in the night. The
sounds might have come from the far road, as some one had suggested,
and the light might have issued from a hundred other more likely
sources than that of a magic lamp! Gerry was probably right; but
Betty sighed.
"If only--" said she. "I somehow don't feel as though it could be
right for me to wear my Tenderfoot's badge until the Cup is found!"
She went upstairs soberly enough, and got into bed that night without
a word. To-morrow was Midsummer Day, and the Cup was lost; to-morrow
she was to be admitted into the Daisy patrol. But-- There was a
very great deal of twisting and turning before Betty fell asleep that
night.
She woke early, too, on the next morning. Half-past six o'clock was
sounding from the village church tower as she opened her eyes and
became conscious of the scents and sounds and sights of the early
Midsummer morning. To-day was the day of the investiture, but the
Cup was still lost! To-day she was to be enrolled as one of the
Daisies; but owing to her own carelessness the Cup which her patrol
had held in trust for a year was lost not only to them but to the
entire company of Guides. Betty was blinking back tears, hidden as
she was in the fastness of her own cubicle, while the rest of the
dormitory still slumbered round her, when she suddenly remembered
Sybil's words of the wood, "Don't _fuss_ about it!"
Betty _wouldn't_ fuss, she told herself. She pulled herself
together, though, with a considerable effort. To lie in bed without
worrying was too difficult; she got up very quickly and began to
dress.
It was quite usual at St. Benedick's for any Guide who woke early to
appear in the gardens before breakfast-time. Betty had often risen
early before, but never so early as on this particular day. "Eve
said the sweet peas had got blown about and the stakes needed looking
at," she reminded herself. "Well, that will be something that I can
do I There may be other girls in the gardens too!"
There were not, however. As it happened, Betty found herself working
alone; and for a while she gardened on busily and happily enough
while the school still slept.
It was just as she was standing back and surveying her work with her
face turned from the fence which divided the gardens from the school
wood that she suddenly heard a voice. The sound of her own name,
too, called in no uncertain tones from the bushes of the wood.
[Illustration: Betty turned and stared at the unexpected apparition.]
Betty turned and stared at the unexpected apparition before her eyes.
CHAPTER XVI
EVERYTHING COMES RIGHT!
Betty was gone! Her clothes were gone, too; and the occupants of the
dormitory had taken it for granted on waking that the energetic
Mascot had risen early as on previous occasions for extra gardening
practice. It was only when, on the sounding of the breakfast-gong,
there appeared no sight of Betty in her usual seat that surprised
comments ran down the garden table.
"Another _mark_! You don't mean----!"
"Where is Betty Carlyle?" inquired the prefect in charge. "Do any of
you juniors know?"
Not one of them knew, however. A universal shaking of heads
prevailed.
"Go out into the gardens, Gerry," commanded Miss Drury from the
wallflower table; "she must be there."
But Betty was not there, though the presence of certain gardening
tools proclaimed the fact that the Mascot must certainly have spent
some time in working close to the sweet-pea hedge.
"Miss Drury, her gardening scissors are there. Some raffia, too.
Just lying about!" Gerry's eyes were wide.
"Go back to your seat, Gerry, and finish your breakfast. One of the
prefects will go and look for her." Miss Drury's tones were as
common-sensible as ever.
But little breakfast was possible for Gerry. She was beginning to
grapple with an idea. Where was Betty? Already all the window-table
girls were beginning to whisper, and the whispers were spreading
round the room. Doron, the prefect who had been sent out to continue
the search, had returned too, and Miss Drury herself had left the
room after requesting Sybil to take her place at the head of the
wallflower table.
"Please say grace when every one has finished, Sybil, and dismiss the
girls to the grounds as usual."
"Yes, Miss Drury."
Their tones were level and quiet. Sybil's tones in pronouncing grace
and in uttering the usual commands were level and quiet too. But it
was quite certain that "something" had happened. Gerry, feeling
strangely desolate without Betty's presence, made her way into the
grounds alone.
Where was Betty? Was her disappearance in any way connected with the
queer story which she had told Gerry last night? Could it be that--
Her thoughts were broken into by fragments of conversation overheard
from the lips of passing couples.
"On the day of her investiture, too!"
"She looked awfully bothered yesterday evening. And did not say one
word while she was undressing----"
"Do you think it's anything about the Cup?"
Suddenly, in the midst of the chattering, came the summons from the
bell. Lines were made, as usual, without more speaking; in single
file the girls made their way into the Hall--all but one; the
Mascot's place was empty, and Gerry felt Miss Carey's glance rest for
a moment longer upon the vacant space as her eye travelled down the
Hall.
But prayers were said, the roll was called; then, before the order
came to leave the room, the headmistress stood up and looked down
steadily at the lines before her.
"It appears that Betty Carlyle is missing. Will any girl who can
give any reason--possible or probable: any reason at _all_!--for her
absence, stand out from the lines while the rest file out."
Gerry, three minutes afterwards, found herself standing alone in the
big Oak Room while the headmistress descended from the little
platform and came to her side.
"Well, Geraldine?"
"Miss Carey, I think--I'm almost sure, that Betty has gone to Witch's
Wood!"
* * * * * *
"But--!" said Betty.
"He's ill, poor lad, and askin' for you. Won't lay quiet. My man
fetched doctor to un last night, and he told us--doctor did--to give
un anything wot he fancied, 'im bein' in such a bad way. So I come
along 'cos I knew you'd come, little Miss Carlyle--you with the soft
heart as kissed the baby. And sure, too, it's the Cup he's talkin'
about, end on. An' it bein' Midsummer Day--" The speaker stopped
for breath and mopped a heated brow.
"But who _is_ 'he'?" inquired Betty, staring.
She had got used to the first surprise--that of suddenly seeing
behind her in the school wood the figure of Anna Grimes of the
caravan, dishevelled and dusty, certainly, but with the delight of
recognition in her eyes. How she had got there Betty hadn't had time
to consider as yet, owing to the torrent of talk which flowed from
her visitor's lips.
"I come meself, little Miss Carlyle; me man was against it. But the
poor lad being in such a bad way, I couldn't cross him, being
soft-hearted myself. Comed up to our van, he did, early yesterday
morning, arsking for water. Fell asleep while he were drinking of
it, he did, poor natural, and I threw a coat over him and let him lay
there. Well, as my man says, the beasts and the poor naturals is
sort of specials, in a manner of speaking, if you takes my meaning,
and we munna go agin them. So, w'en 'e wakes up all shivery and 'ot
at noon, an' arsks whether it be Midsummer yet, and if so why he be
so cold, and whether t' Cup be safe, and all about the sweet young
lady wot was afraid to lose it--well, at first we thinks of 'im as
light-'eaded." Mrs. Grimes stopped for breath.
"Talking about that there Cup 'e were, though," she went on; "and so
we listens. 'Miss Betty's 'er nyme,' says 'e, quite sensible, too.
'I'se 'eard the other young ladies call 'er,' says 'e. 'My young
lydy she is,' ses 'e again, 'wot patched up my cheek. An' I guv her
my word,' he goes on, 'to do summut for 'er in return. Aye, an' I
done it,' ses he. All sensible so far, as my Andrew says; but then
the poor natural starts a-crying out with pains in his boneses, and
arsking if it be Midsummer Day yet, 'cos 'e's got to guv the young
lydy the Cup wot 'e's kep' safe for 'er till then. 'E 'eard 'er say
over the garding wall as she was afraid she'd lose it, ses 'e. Well,
an' 'e got worser at night; and my man goes to fetch doctor. An'
doctor comes and ses 'tis rheumatiz fever caught with laying out o'
nights----"
"I don't understand one word, I don't think," broke in Betty, almost
trembling. "At least I believe I'm beginning to. Only--" She gave
a hurried look around.
"An' no need for you to, Miss Carlyle, dear. You just come along o'
me. Doctor says 'twill worsen him to keep calling, and it's calling
out fer you that he's after. Wants to give her the Cup, so 'e
says----"
"But how? And I ought to ask leave----!"
"Sure, 'tis the doctor's leave as you's got. There's no time to
lose, Miss Carlyle, dear. An' you can come along this way. 'Tis the
way found by himself, poor natural; but he described of it to me
proper clever. 'You goes along,' ses 'e, 'to that there medder
bordering the road. An' close by there,' ses 'e, 'you'll see a wide
ditch-like way, with nettles growing thick so as no one notices. Dry
it be in summer, and deep it be; and you goes along careful; and
there be room to walk nigh upstanding all way through medder till you
comes to the wood what belongs to St. Benedick's school and sees the
flowers. Aye, they're grand to watch, a-laying secret in the ditch,'
ses he, 'but the young ladies is grander; but go careful there fer
fear they sees you, and crouch and crawl.' Well, I promises him to
take that there way, it being a full mile quicker an' nearer. So,
see here, Miss, step along now; for you're safe with me, as you
knows, and the lad's right-down bad wi' calling for you."
Hardly knowing what she did, Betty followed Anna Grimes's lead.
Parting the great tangled mass of grasses and bracken at the side of
the wood, the woman displayed the opening of a wide disused ditch.
She crouched down and started off, while Betty followed on behind.
Here was a thrilly adventure, indeed, if she had had time to think of
the journey in that light as she followed her guide. But Betty's
mind was working too rapidly as she made two and two into a sensible
four, while thinking out the information scraps which Mrs. Grimes had
given her.
For "he" must be the poor boy of the adventure on that day when she
had clambered out of Witch's Wood and taken his part against the
village urchins who had been ill-treating him. But what could he
know of the lost Cup? "Well"--a light seemed to be gradually dawning
over things as she thought--"he knew this queer way along from the
meadow; and so he's known the way into our school wood. And he's
been there--Mrs. Grimes says so; and he's watched me gardening. And
he heard me say, on that morning when I was talking to Gerry (and I
_did_ say it, for I remember), that I would rather anything happened
than that we should lose the Cup. I said, too (I _did_ say it, or
else Gerry did), that we wanted to keep it on Midsummer Day. Oh,
what comes next? I suppose he mixed it up in his poor head and
didn't understand," said Betty to herself in a motherly way, just as
her thoughts were switched off the matter for a moment by the sound
of Anna Grimes's voice just ahead.
"We's out of the ditch-like way now, Miss, and here's the medder.
You can stand up now and stretch yerself proper before we goes on.
'Twill on'y be a little ways on now. The van's down the moor a bit,
nearer than we was last time you sees us. Out of the winds--" The
queer pilgrimage continued.
It was more than a relief from the strangeness of things when, as the
caravan came at last in sight, another vehicle appeared beside
it--nothing less ordinary and everyday-looking than the doctor's
car--and the school doctor, Rene's father, came himself to meet them.
"Tch, tch. What's this now, Mrs. Grimes? Your husband said you'd
gone for the young lady, but I could hardly credit it. Well, I was
just off to the school myself, it happens. Now, my dear--Betty
Carlyle, isn't it? you see, I've heard all about you from Rene, and I
know the story of the Cup, and I've heard the end of the tale as told
by these good folk here--step straight into my car while I speak to
Mrs. Grimes for a minute. And then I'll take you straight back to
St. Benedick's. This is no place for you, although the good woman no
doubt thought she was obeying orders. It appears"--Dr. Fergus turned
as he spoke--"that we've got your Cup back safely, or, at least,
shall have it very shortly, thanks to poor Paul." His tone changed,
and he broke off into a long list of directions as he addressed the
van-woman; while Betty, with her heart beating wildly with
excitement, possessed her soul in patience until he should be free to
appear.
It was almost half an hour later, while driving her back to the
school, that Dr. Fergus explained further. "In Witch's Wood; the
poor lad's hidden it there--in the cottage. It seems that he found
out the fact (which no one else among the village people appears to
have found out, by the way) that there aren't such things as ghosts!
And he's evidently adopted the so-called 'haunted cottage' there, and
has used it as a kind of refuge. He's got a bad granny, poor boy,
who doesn't do her best by him, and he's taken to camping there.
Plays his pipe, too, there; he's a bit of a musician, poor lad, as
these naturals often are. Spoke of the fairies--well, poor lad, poor
lad, he's got paid out with a bad attack of rheumatic fever for any
trespassing he's done. Oh yes, the Cup's there, evidently as safe as
can be, in the little house. He says he was guarding it for you,
Miss Betty; and for you, by the way, he seems to have a genuine
devotion. He told me that you wanted it kept safe till Midsummer
Day!"
Betty felt a lump in her throat. "He--he's muddled up what I said!
But I _did_ say it," she whispered; "and it's kind of him to want to
help. I did very little for him, you know. Only----"
"Eh? Well, I daresay you'll be able to do a bit more in the future,
then. I understand that all you Guides are out to help others in
need of help, and here's a genuine case. He'll be ill for some time,
but we'll get him moved to the infirmary, and he'll be proud of a
little notice, I'm sure. See--" the doctor suddenly slowed
down--"here's my idea, Miss Betty," said he. "It happens that we're
on the border of Witch's Wood now, and I've the right to go in, I
believe. Suppose we leave the car in charge of the reputed witch,"
continued Dr. Fergus, clearing the fence as nimbly as a boy and
holding out a friendly hand to Betty; "unless, of course, you'd
rather stay outside."
Stay outside! It was with a wildly beating heart, in which
excitement and eagerness mingled, that Betty followed the doctor
through the wood.
There stood the cottage little and lonely as ever, as they gained the
clearing. There, as they crossed the threshold, lay, as before, a
rough bordering of flowers and ferns. They had been picked two days
ago and were withered now. And there, as they entered the little
inner room--filled with withered flowers, surrounded with withered
flowers, and shinily polished as ever it had been when in charge of
the Daisy patrol--was the _Guide Cup_!
Somehow or other at that instant Betty's eyes filled with tears. Her
heart felt red-hot, and she couldn't speak. Here was the lost Cup;
but she could only remember poor Paul who had tried to "do something"
for her; poor Paul who had evidently watched her devotedly from the
hollow hiding-place in the ditch while she cleaned the Cup, who had
listened to her words, and who had put his own simple construction on
them, and who had, so unintentionally, helped to bring so much
trouble!
The doctor may have noticed her tears, or he may not; he said
nothing, but he bent down and lifted up the Cup. "We'll take it
back, just as it is," he said, "and explain to Miss Carey. Oh yes, I
know all the ins and outs of the story from Rene, and I believe you
Daisies will hold the Cup next year after all now, because----"
But Betty burst in with a choky half-sob. "It isn't _that_. I don't
believe the Daisies will even _think_ of that when they see it again!
I don't believe any of the Guides will, though it will be so lovely
to have it. It's--oh, it's all so beautiful and sad, all mixed up
together, for the Cup really to come back on Cup Day, and for me to
be invested with the Cup there, and yet for Paul--" She broke off.
"_That's_ what we'll think of," she choked.
"Look here, then," said the doctor, placing the Cup in her hands.
"Here's an idea. I understand from Rene that you're giving up
mascoting to-day when you become a Tenderfoot, eh? Well, there's
poor Paul, who hasn't any one to care much about him, and who seems
to think an uncommon lot of you Guides; suppose you adopt the poor
chap as mascot after this, eh?" The doctor's voice was very cheery
and kind. "I know Miss Carey, and I rather think----"
"_Oh!_" cried Betty in her most motherly voice, clasping the silver
Cup with its burden of withered flowers while tears of happiness and
trouble chased themselves down her cheeks. "Oh! _do_ let's hurry
back to St. Benedick's. I truly believe that Sybil and all the
Guides will say that that would make _everything_ beautiful and
right!"
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