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!”

“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?”

“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.”

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——”

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.

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.