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.

“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.

“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.”

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.

“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.

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——”