CHAPTER XIII

LITTLE FRIEND OF ALL THE WORLD

“But I don’t think we can!” said Gerry, staring. “You see, we’re not allowed beyond this ridge. We’re—tracking.”

“‘Tracking,’ is it!” The lad’s face grew surlier. “Well, an’ it’s you, then, sure enough, as is the other young ladies, and my Dad arsks you to come along. If you’s tracking, you’s on the wrong scent, he’d have you know. An’ ’e’ll tell you so himself. You can jest come along an’ hear what ’e’s got to say if you’s them as tries to fix blame on folk as lives honest.”

“But—” began Gerry again.

“Well, if you likes to say ’ere and now as you’s not tracking, then it’s jest them two young ladies up there as is in it,” remarked the boy, softening a little at the amazed look on their faces.

“Gerry, he doesn’t understand,” began Betty. “Perhaps—” But Gerry broke in.

“We’re having a tracking practice. Not tracking people; at least, of course—” she broke off. “The others are only practising too.”

“That they isn’t.” The boy’s voice grew louder. “Following travelling folkses; that’s what they’s adoing, and picking up their travelling signs all unpolite, and arsking them about who stole cups and all!” There was no mistaking the outraged tone in the lad’s voice.

“Oh dear!” Gerry broke out in a distracted voice. She turned to Betty. “We’ll have to go. Perhaps we can explain. They’ve got into dreadful trouble evidently. We must!”

“All right,” agreed Betty, feeling her knees shaking under her.

But she felt that Gerry was right. They certainly must go, though the prospect was an uninviting, not to say a terrifying, one. The others had plainly got into some trouble with the gipsies of a caravan, that was certain, and they were being detained. Perhaps Gerry would be able to explain if they went. And anyway, they could not leave Mona and Rene there alone. She got up as Gerry did, and followed her friend’s lead.

“It’s worse enough,” remarked the lad in a less surly tone as they did so, “bein’ looked down by the Romany folk what says they are the true folks of the road, and calls us non-such and mumpers. Mumpers belike we is, but we work fair an’ honest fer a living, and the police passes us civil and knows us for such. An’ when two young ladies comes after us callin’ and arsking ef we’s seen the silver cup what’s advertised up in Woodhurst Police Station as stolen—” he broke off in a mutter.

“Oh dear!” said Gerry again, but sotto voce this time. Here was indeed a pickle.

“‘You can jest step back and track them then, Andy!’ so my Dad ses, ‘an’ we’ll show ’em whether we’ve got stole cups on board. The other young ladies ses as there was two more of ’em a-tracking. Well, bring ’em along,’ ses Dad. ‘If so be as we’s got to turn this here caravan back to the police station we’ll do it, and face the young ladies, yes, wiv the troof. The police gives us a civil word when they meets us, which is more than some young ladies does!’”

“It’s perfectly dreadful,” remarked Gerry to Betty. “It’s quite plain what’s happened. They’ve hailed the caravaners and offended them. And—oh, why, here they all are!”

Just over the third ridge they came in sight of the moor road again where a caravan was standing. The horse between the shafts was munching grass unconcernedly; but the driver—a grizzled, middle-aged man—was standing in an aggressive attitude still eyeing a pair of rather woebegone maidens.

“I say, here you are!” began Mona indignantly, as the others arrived. “Has he brought you? I wish you would explain that——”

“It’s explainings I wants,” burst out the owner of the caravan angrily. “Folks may be poor, but they’s honest too; and they’s got their feelings. And when two young ladies—” the plaint began again. “Mumpers we may be called by some, but we earns a living fair and square and honest in summer time by travelling. An’ the police treats us civil; and here we’s tracked down by young ladies what calls us up fer stolen cups!”

“They didn’t mean—” began Gerry.

But Mona’s angry protestations, and Rene’s tears, and Gerry’s beseechments were of little avail. As for Betty, she stood by feeling even more useless than the rest.

For it was evident that these were a party of proud and respectable working-people who had been wounded in their most vulnerable part by Mona’s and Rene’s suspicious-sounding inquiries. The burden of the older man’s speech was the same as that of his son’s. If they were accused of stealing silver cups by young ladies who had evidently come out on purpose of tracking, well, they would turn round and go straight back to the Woodhurst Police Station, taking the young ladies in tow! “To show as we’re fair and square and honest, and that the police there knows us fine and treats us civil,” repeated the man. “Not to say that the Weyhurst police knows us too, where we comes from!”

“‘Weyhurst!’” repeated Betty in a surprised squeak.

For Weyhurst was the town where she lived.

“‘Weyhurst!’ I ses and means,” said the older man severely, evidently scenting further suspicions in Betty’s surprised squeak. “They knows me fair and square there, from Weyhurst. And if we’s being tracked, I’ll show every one of you, down Woodhurst here, w’ere we passed through this morning, and was treated civil by the police, whether Andrew Grimes—licensed travelling broom-seller—ain’t respected by all atween Weyhurst and Woodhurst, him an’ his wife Anna Grimes too, wot is travelling in this here caravan at this very minute.”

The said Anna Grimes put a tidy head through the caravan door as though to prove the truth of her husband’s remarks. She was a decent middle-aged woman, but her face was set in angry lines.

“An’ as I ses, to be sure,” she broke out, “we’s enough trouble to make an honest living these days without young ladies a-tracking us down, and then going back, perhaps, an’ sending police after us for cups. As I ses—” She broke off suddenly with a cry of surprise. “Dad, who’ve you got ’ere?” she called out in a different voice. “Why——!”

“Why—!” remarked Betty, too, at that instant.

For something in the look of Anna Grimes’s face was familiar, though what the familiarity consisted in she could not for a minute or two find out. The woman’s face was somehow connected in her mind with home; and something unpleasant; and—oh yes, with a baby!

It was at this instant that the woman, who had disappeared inside the caravan for a moment after uttering the exclamation, appeared in view again, panting, and made her way down the steps carrying a small child in her arms.

“Dad! Well, I never, Dad!” she called excitedly, addressing her surprised husband, but keeping her eyes on the still more surprised Betty. “Sure this is the little young lady wot I’s always told you of wot came running into doctor’s waiting-room and kisses the baby. Brought him luck, too, she did, as I’ve always said; seeing as he got through the fever so easy, and—” The angry lines of her face were all smoothed away. She wore a comfortable smile as she approached the girls.

The “fever!” At that word Betty remembered everything. The woman, Mrs. Grimes, whose home her husband had said was at Weyhurst, was the very woman who had brought the screaming baby into Dad’s waiting-room, and to whose aid she had hurried unasked in a fit of zeal, only to earn for herself and the twins a legacy of the said fever for which, as Dad had discovered, the child had been sickening at the time. The action had seemed to be fraught with unmitigated disaster at the time, but now——!

The whole caravan atmosphere had changed; smiles took the place of frowns. “It’s a mistake, Dad, that’s what it is, Dad,” said the woman. “You’ve been too ’asty-like. Sure, the doctor’s young lady wot kissed the baby she wouldn’t go for to——”

“Then what for do the rest of ’em—?” began Mr. Grimes, but in a very different tone of voice.

“Explain, Betty. He’ll listen to you,” urged Mona.

Thus adjured, the Mascot, feeling at the moment how very little she really knew about Guiding, did try to explain. “Yes, I’m Betty Carlyle, and I do remember the baby, and I’m very glad he got well,” she said shyly; “and I wouldn’t, and not one of us would, ever think you’d taken our Cup. We’re Guides, and we’re friends of all the world, you see—at least we’d like to be—and if we’ve done anything un-Guidy, we’re very sorry,” she finished up.

“It was us that did; not you and Gerry. And we are awfully sorry,” put in Mona, addressing Mr. Grimes.

“Well, you can’t say no more than that same. And it’s only fair and square to take your word,” remarked the caravan owner, extending a horny fist.

In ten minutes the entire party were the best of friends. Apologies had been exchanged between Mona and Rene and the Grimes family; kisses had been exchanged between the Guides and the baby. (“There’s not a mite of risk, little Miss Carlyle, dear, not this time anyways; an’ you can tell the doctor, your Dada, with our duty, as how you met us an’ the baby was doing fine; fer a true friend he’s been!”) The caravan started again upon its way, while the Guides, still waving in response to salutations with a whip, turned their course towards the arranged meeting-place with the head girl.

“I say, we’ve got to tell Sybil,” remarked Mona. “And we’ll deserve anything for letting down the Guides.” They marched gravely along four abreast without saying a word for a while.

It was Rene who suddenly, as they reached the last ridge, voiced the thoughts of herself and Mona. “I say, it was wonderful about you and the baby,” she remarked, turning to Betty. “If it hadn’t been that you’d been so friend-to-all-the-worldy, you know—and even before you’d ever heard of Guides, too!—we might have had a much worse time!”

“Yes,” agreed Mona.

Betty said nothing, but her heart gave a jump of joy.

“She’s proved that she’s a real true Mascot anyway, hasn’t she?” remarked Gerry loyally.

“Rather,” agreed the others.

Betty’s heart suddenly felt lighter than it had felt for days.

CHAPTER XIV

THE PIONEER PICNIC

The days had gone by since the tracking expedition; but nothing had been heard of the Cup. The junior Daisies had walked warily, however, since then—the unfortunate result of their excessive zeal having been a lesson to each one of the four girls concerned.

Perhaps to Mona and Rene particularly, however; for, until that afternoon, they had been rather inclined to look down a pair of superior noses at the Mascot whose unthinking ways had more than probably brought about the loss of the Cup. Now they themselves had brought trouble by their own lack of thought; trouble, too, out of which the Mascot had, by a kind of miracle, delivered them. Sybil, when the account of the afternoon’s adventures was duly rendered to her, spared no sympathy at all for the delinquents concerned.

“You went after the caravan and asked—” Her voice sounded incredulously cold. “You dared to?”

“Not if they’d stolen it, Sybil. Honest Injun, we didn’t ask them that. They just took it that way!”

“And wouldn’t you have ‘taken it that way’ if you had been in their place? It comes to exactly the same thing. I don’t wonder that their pride was hurt. Have you no imagination at all? Miss Carey must know what you have told me, of course. It’s just unthinkable that Guides should have done it—even Tenderfoots. Yes, as you say, Betty has proved herself a mascot this afternoon. It was very strange, in one way, that she should have happened to know them; but it’s not strange in another. She might have known them, and yet—” Sybil stopped. “Do you see what I mean?” she said.

“You mean that it wasn’t because they’d seen her before, but because she’d been so Guidy to the baby that made them feel friendly,” put in Gerry.

“That’s exactly it, Gerry. Betty was ‘Guidy,’ as you called it, then—even before she knew us, or joined the Daisies. It’s nice to think that her enrolment as a real Tenderfoot will not be long in coming now.”

Sybil gave Betty a very kind smile, for she knew, as did all Betty’s other acquaintances, that the Mascot was straining every nerve and working with all her heart and soul towards the moment of her investiture, which had been arranged for on the next Midsummer Day. That Midsummer Day was also Cup Day, Betty knew as well as the rest. Midsummer Day was coming very close now, too, and it seemed likely that there could be no tangible trophy at hand when the award took place. The Daisies had all faced the fact that they must be passed over as “best patrol” in favour of the Foxgloves, who ranked next in order of merit; that next year the Foxglove patrol must take first place in Hall under the little empty ebony stand seemed only just and fair. But they were working extra hard, every one of them; and if Mona and Rene had forgotten once to “hasten slowly” during their experience on the moor, that very experience had served as a lesson in the Guide law which neither of them would forget.

Meanwhile work went on in classrooms and on the playing-fields, in the Guide-rooms and in the gardens, and Midsummer drew nearer every day.

Midsummer weather, too, prevailed, hot and glorious. “Fine weather for the huts,” was the universal morning greeting of certain senior Guides. For one of the interests of the summer term at St. Benedick’s was the yearly erection of huts in the clearing in the wood by any of the older Guides who had obtained permission to work for their Pioneer badges.

“The clearing’s kept specially for it,” as Gerry told Betty. “None of us go there. It takes them weeks and weeks to build them; for they don’t hurry through them, but just work at them when they’re free. Sybil got her Pioneer badge last year; but Eve of the Daisies, and Jean, who’s second in the Foxgloves, and Louise, who’s a Buttercup, are all working for their Pioneers this year. And when the huts are ready there’ll be a ‘hut-warming.’”

“A hut-warming?” repeated Betty.

“Yes, and it’s to be the Saturday before Midsummer Day. That’s decided,” Gerry informed her. “They’re making a camp kitchen, too, and on the night after the ‘warming’ the Pioneers are to be allowed to camp there. Miss Drury’s camping with them. It will be tremendous fun for them, I should think; they’re to cook their own supper and breakfast next day, and act just like Robinson Crusoes. I’m simply longing to be far enough on to work up for my Pioneer badge!”

Betty certainly agreed that it sounded one of the “most thrilly” of the badges, and looked forward with as much zest as the rest for the Pioneer entertainment.

“If the weather—!” was the remark on everybody’s lips during the week preceding the great day.

But there was no “if” about the weather at all when Saturday eventually arrived. The Pioneer hut-makers had spent an energetic week. They had taken advice from Miss Drury and from older girls who had pioneered before them; their camp kitchen’s possibilities had been secretly and privately tested; their huts had received all finishing touches in good time. “The ‘hut-warming’ only lasts for two hours—from four to six,” as Gerry told Betty; “but it’s tremendous fun. They do everything, you see—baking the cakes and all. It generally takes the whole two hours, though, just to eat the meal because it’s all such fun! And then—well, we don’t stay very long because they’ve got to arrange their night camp, and, of course, they’re not awfully experienced in the ways of things.”

The “Pioneers,” however, proved particularly brainy ones that year. They advanced to meet their guests, each from her wigwam door, dressed in Red Indian garments of their own fashioning and design, and proceeded to provide a feast as pioneery as it was peculiar. Instead of tea the guests were served with a beverage which the hosts had prepared from nettles, and pronounced “absolutely non-poisonous and much more pioneery.” Wild strawberries and raspberries in limited quantities figured on the menu, but the pièce de résistance of the feast was the quantity of damper-cakes and bannocks cooked over the embers of the fire. They might be slightly doughy in their interiors and might cause the interior organs of the guests to feel slightly doleful afterwards, but “it was worth it,” as Gerry declared to Betty on their way back, when the “hut-warming” was over and the Guides were left to themselves for the night.

“Rather,” agreed Betty, but in a very abstracted tone.

“What’s wrong? Did you eat too many of them?” inquired Gerry sympathetically. “I thought you suddenly seemed rather—well, glum!”

But Betty’s “glumness” was not the result of damper-cakes, as she proceeded to explain, though the explanation was not apparently easy to make. “I say, Gerry,” she burst out suddenly. “Look!” From her pocket she produced a coloured object of a ribbony texture. “It was in a bush,” blurted out Betty. “Close to the Witch’s Wood fence, you know, where we were all sitting at tea. And I suddenly saw it, and pulled it out.”

“Why,” said Gerry, staring, “one of the Daisies must have lost it. It’s a bit of our patrol ribbon.”

“That’s what I thought,” burst in Betty; “but only just at first. Look here, Gerry; listen. It may be that; but then it mayn’t. You see, it couldn’t have been lost to-day, because it’s been wet with rain and all tousled, and looks as though it had been there for weeks. And the Guides wouldn’t push ribbon into a bush, and——”

“Well?” inquired Gerry, staring. “But even if not, I don’t see——”

“It’s tied in a bow, you see,” went on Betty; “and——”

“Well?” inquired Gerry, staring still.

“And oh, Gerry, don’t you see? Why, our patrol ribbon was tied on to the Cup! In a bow, too; for I untied it and tied it up again that morning when I cleaned it. And it seems to me—” Betty stopped.

“Betty!” Gerry was staring now in good earnest. “You don’t think that the Cup’s hidden somewhere in the school wood, do you? Why, the Guides have searched, you know.”

“I don’t know what to think,” said Betty, looking more miserable than ever. “The fact is, Gerry, I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve done something else silly and helter-skelter without meaning to. An idea has just come to me. I’ve never told any one at all about it, but now—” She stared from the ribbon to Gerry as though wondering what to say next, or whether to leave something still unsaid.

“Whatever do you mean?” asked her friend.

CHAPTER XV

BETTY SHARES THE SECRET

“And the queer thing was, that we all of us saw it! Even Miss Drury!” Eve was speaking to a circle of interested listeners on the evening after the night camp in the wood.

“Weren’t you nervous?” inquired some one.

“Nervous—pooh! Of the witch, you mean? That silly story! Why, it wasn’t till this morning that a single one of us even remembered it!”

“Did the light come from the haunted cottage, do you think?” put in some one.

“I don’t know anything except that there certainly did seem to be a moving light. I don’t even know, for one thing, in what part of the wood the cottage is supposed to be! I only know that I don’t believe in ‘haunts’ of any kind,” continued the narrator briskly. “I daresay it was a glow-worm of monstrous size, or a keeper, perhaps, on the prowl. Whatever it was, we saw no more of it!”

“You forget the music!” put in one of the other Pioneers.

“Oh yes, we heard that too! We all sat up on our elbows and listened to it. Like a flute playing. It probably came from the road, though it sounded, certainly, as though it issued from Witch’s Wood!” Eve laughed. “Miss Drury said that if last night instead of to-night had been Midsummer Eve we might have been in the thick of a fairy revel! But it didn’t keep us awake; we all floated off into deep slumber. Perhaps it may have been a magic lullaby, for not one of us stirred until Miss Drury fairly commanded us to wake this morning!” Eve moved off. “Well, the Pioneering’s over,” remarked she; “and Midsummer Day’s to-morrow with—whatever it brings. I only wish it could bring the Cup!”

There was no need for words; every one else was wishing the same wish too. Everybody, strange to say, at that moment except Betty!

For the last scrap of Eve’s sentence had not even been heard by her. She was remembering with all her might and main the words that had gone before. She stood speechless with surprise, still wondering, for several moments after Eve had disappeared.

What had Eve said? Had she really said it? Could Betty’s ears by any chance have misled her? she asked herself. That the pioneering Guides from their night camp had seen a light from Witch’s Wood! Also that they had heard the sound of flute-playing! Like a fairy revel; like a magic lullaby, Eve had said. She had been only laughing, of course; but could it be—oh, could it possibly be that the magic was true?

For a certain suspicion had been dawning in Betty’s imaginative mind ever since yesterday. It had seemed too unlikely an idea, so she had told herself at first, to be true, and she had decided not to take any one into her confidence, not even Gerry, in case her ideas should be laughed at as absurd. But now—well, she could not keep the idea to herself any more. After supper on Sunday evenings the girls were always free to walk about the grounds in couples until bedtime. To-night Gerry was to be Betty’s partner. After hearing what Eve had just said, the Mascot could hardly wait until the after-supper-time came.

“Gerry——!”

“Whatever is it?” inquired Gerry solicitously. That Betty’s state of mind was one of extreme anxiety about something or other had been evident all through supper-time. She had eaten nothing and had narrowly escaped an early dismissal to bed on account of her lack of appetite. “Though perhaps the hour outside will do you as much good as an extra hour in bed in this hot weather,” as Nurse had conceded at last. “No doubt you’re excited about your investiture to-morrow.”

“Is it the investiture?” inquired Gerry now.

“It is, and it isn’t. At least it isn’t that really, except in so far as that everything’s so tremendously connected.” Betty gave a sigh. “Gerry, I’ve something to tell you. I almost told you when you asked me last night; only I couldn’t. I was afraid you might—well—that you might laugh at me, you know. And that would ‘take the bloom off’ so, like Sybil said.” Betty stopped.

“I don’t know one bit what you mean; but I shan’t laugh,” said Gerry quickly.

For even if Betty’s story were to be a queer one, yet it couldn’t be exactly a laughable one, Gerry was sure from the look in her friend’s eyes. She listened without a word until the telling was through.

But by the time the story was done Gerry’s expression of face had changed from one of amazement to one of extreme incredulity. At its last word she stood still and said nothing at all.

“You don’t believe it?” burst out Betty.

“I don’t see how I could. Betty, how could any one? It seems so impossible.” Gerry’s eyes were thoughtful. “Just because you found that bit of patrol ribbon in the hedge which might possibly have come off the Cup!”

“It did. It did. I recognized the bow,” put in Betty.

“Well, even if it did, it needn’t mean that the witch had taken the Cup! Particularly when, after all, there isn’t one—a witch, I mean! How could there be? Guides don’t believe in such things!”

“I didn’t say exactly a witch!” put in Betty vehemently. “I said the magic that was there might have had something to do with the losing of the Cup! You never saw the cottage, and I did!”

“I know,” agreed Gerry. “And I must say I can’t think why you didn’t mention it before, if you thought——”

“I didn’t think; and I mean, I was trying to ‘keep the bloom on’; because it all seemed so strange and lovely for magic to be keeping the cottage so sweet and flowery. And I thought ‘I shan’t tell any one’; and then the idea came to me afterwards that perhaps I oughtn’t to have stepped inside, and that the magic had punished me for trespassing by taking away the Cup, you see,” finished up Betty lamely. “Oh, I know it sounds silly! I told you you would want to laugh. And it has ‘taken the bloom off’ to tell it,” said Betty, almost in tears. “But when the Pioneers did see a light in the wood, and did hear the fairy piper, why, I thought I ought—for the sake of every one——”

“I’m not laughing,” said Gerry; and she certainly wasn’t. She was staring straight at Betty as though she could make neither head nor tail of her story. “As to going into Witch’s Wood, though, to-night, and looking in the cottage to see whether the Cup’s there, you simply can’t do that! And you would never get leave to do it, I’m sure, if you asked. Truly, I do think it’s all rather—well, far-fetched,” she finished up, wrinkling her brows.

“Oh dear,” Betty sighed. But in the light of her friend’s common-sensible remarks she was beginning to think how helter-skelter again her imaginings must have been. After all, perhaps it was just a coincidence that the Pioneers had heard music in the night. The sounds might have come from the far road, as some one had suggested, and the light might have issued from a hundred other more likely sources than that of a magic lamp! Gerry was probably right; but Betty sighed.

“If only—” said she. “I somehow don’t feel as though it could be right for me to wear my Tenderfoot’s badge until the Cup is found!”

She went upstairs soberly enough, and got into bed that night without a word. To-morrow was Midsummer Day, and the Cup was lost; to-morrow she was to be admitted into the Daisy patrol. But— There was a very great deal of twisting and turning before Betty fell asleep that night.

She woke early, too, on the next morning. Half-past six o’clock was sounding from the village church tower as she opened her eyes and became conscious of the scents and sounds and sights of the early Midsummer morning. To-day was the day of the investiture, but the Cup was still lost! To-day she was to be enrolled as one of the Daisies; but owing to her own carelessness the Cup which her patrol had held in trust for a year was lost not only to them but to the entire company of Guides. Betty was blinking back tears, hidden as she was in the fastness of her own cubicle, while the rest of the dormitory still slumbered round her, when she suddenly remembered Sybil’s words of the wood, “Don’t fuss about it!”

Betty wouldn’t fuss, she told herself. She pulled herself together, though, with a considerable effort. To lie in bed without worrying was too difficult; she got up very quickly and began to dress.

It was quite usual at St. Benedick’s for any Guide who woke early to appear in the gardens before breakfast-time. Betty had often risen early before, but never so early as on this particular day. “Eve said the sweet peas had got blown about and the stakes needed looking at,” she reminded herself. “Well, that will be something that I can do! There may be other girls in the gardens too!”

There were not, however. As it happened, Betty found herself working alone; and for a while she gardened on busily and happily enough while the school still slept.

It was just as she was standing back and surveying her work with her face turned from the fence which divided the gardens from the school wood that she suddenly heard a voice. The sound of her own name, too, called in no uncertain tones from the bushes of the wood.

Betty turned and stared at the unexpected apparition before her eyes.

CHAPTER XVI

EVERYTHING COMES RIGHT!

Betty was gone! Her clothes were gone, too; and the occupants of the dormitory had taken it for granted on waking that the energetic Mascot had risen early as on previous occasions for extra gardening practice. It was only when, on the sounding of the breakfast-gong, there appeared no sight of Betty in her usual seat that surprised comments ran down the garden table.

“Another mark! You don’t mean——!”

“Where is Betty Carlyle?” inquired the prefect in charge. “Do any of you juniors know?”

Not one of them knew, however. A universal shaking of heads prevailed.

“Go out into the gardens, Gerry,” commanded Miss Drury from the wallflower table; “she must be there.”

But Betty was not there, though the presence of certain gardening tools proclaimed the fact that the Mascot must certainly have spent some time in working close to the sweet-pea hedge.

“Miss Drury, her gardening scissors are there. Some raffia, too. Just lying about!” Gerry’s eyes were wide.

“Go back to your seat, Gerry, and finish your breakfast. One of the prefects will go and look for her.” Miss Drury’s tones were as common-sensible as ever.

But little breakfast was possible for Gerry. She was beginning to grapple with an idea. Where was Betty? Already all the window-table girls were beginning to whisper, and the whispers were spreading round the room. Doron, the prefect who had been sent out to continue the search, had returned too, and Miss Drury herself had left the room after requesting Sybil to take her place at the head of the wallflower table.

“Please say grace when every one has finished, Sybil, and dismiss the girls to the grounds as usual.”

“Yes, Miss Drury.”

Their tones were level and quiet. Sybil’s tones in pronouncing grace and in uttering the usual commands were level and quiet too. But it was quite certain that “something” had happened. Gerry, feeling strangely desolate without Betty’s presence, made her way into the grounds alone.

Where was Betty? Was her disappearance in any way connected with the queer story which she had told Gerry last night? Could it be that— Her thoughts were broken into by fragments of conversation overheard from the lips of passing couples.

“On the day of her investiture, too!”

“She looked awfully bothered yesterday evening. And did not say one word while she was undressing——”

“Do you think it’s anything about the Cup?”

Suddenly, in the midst of the chattering, came the summons from the bell. Lines were made, as usual, without more speaking; in single file the girls made their way into the Hall—all but one; the Mascot’s place was empty, and Gerry felt Miss Carey’s glance rest for a moment longer upon the vacant space as her eye travelled down the Hall.

But prayers were said, the roll was called; then, before the order came to leave the room, the headmistress stood up and looked down steadily at the lines before her.

“It appears that Betty Carlyle is missing. Will any girl who can give any reason—possible or probable: any reason at all!—for her absence, stand out from the lines while the rest file out.”

Gerry, three minutes afterwards, found herself standing alone in the big Oak Room while the headmistress descended from the little platform and came to her side.

“Well, Geraldine?”

“Miss Carey, I think—I’m almost sure, that Betty has gone to Witch’s Wood!”

* * * * * *

“But—!” said Betty.

“He’s ill, poor lad, and askin’ for you. Won’t lay quiet. My man fetched doctor to un last night, and he told us—doctor did—to give un anything wot he fancied, ’im bein’ in such a bad way. So I come along ’cos I knew you’d come, little Miss Carlyle—you with the soft heart as kissed the baby. And sure, too, it’s the Cup he’s talkin’ about, end on. An’ it bein’ Midsummer Day—” The speaker stopped for breath and mopped a heated brow.

“But who is ‘he’?” inquired Betty, staring.

She had got used to the first surprise—that of suddenly seeing behind her in the school wood the figure of Anna Grimes of the caravan, dishevelled and dusty, certainly, but with the delight of recognition in her eyes. How she had got there Betty hadn’t had time to consider as yet, owing to the torrent of talk which flowed from her visitor’s lips.

“I come meself, little Miss Carlyle; me man was against it. But the poor lad being in such a bad way, I couldn’t cross him, being soft-hearted myself. Comed up to our van, he did, early yesterday morning, arsking for water. Fell asleep while he were drinking of it, he did, poor natural, and I threw a coat over him and let him lay there. Well, as my man says, the beasts and the poor naturals is sort of specials, in a manner of speaking, if you takes my meaning, and we munna go agin them. So, w’en ’e wakes up all shivery and ’ot at noon, an’ arsks whether it be Midsummer yet, and if so why he be so cold, and whether t’ Cup be safe, and all about the sweet young lady wot was afraid to lose it—well, at first we thinks of ’im as light-’eaded.” Mrs. Grimes stopped for breath.

“Talking about that there Cup ’e were, though,” she went on; “and so we listens. ‘Miss Betty’s ’er nyme,’ says ’e, quite sensible, too. ‘I’se ’eard the other young ladies call ’er,’ says ’e. ‘My young lydy she is,’ ses ’e again, ‘wot patched up my cheek. An’ I guv her my word,’ he goes on, ‘to do summut for ’er in return. Aye, an’ I done it,’ ses he. All sensible so far, as my Andrew says; but then the poor natural starts a-crying out with pains in his boneses, and arsking if it be Midsummer Day yet, ’cos ’e’s got to guv the young lydy the Cup wot ’e’s kep’ safe for ’er till then. ’E ’eard ’er say over the garding wall as she was afraid she’d lose it, ses ’e. Well, an’ ’e got worser at night; and my man goes to fetch doctor. An’ doctor comes and ses ’tis rheumatiz fever caught with laying out o’ nights——”

“I don’t understand one word, I don’t think,” broke in Betty, almost trembling. “At least I believe I’m beginning to. Only—” She gave a hurried look around.

“An’ no need for you to, Miss Carlyle, dear. You just come along o’ me. Doctor says ’twill worsen him to keep calling, and it’s calling out fer you that he’s after. Wants to give her the Cup, so ’e says——”

“But how? And I ought to ask leave——!”

“Sure, ’tis the doctor’s leave as you’s got. There’s no time to lose, Miss Carlyle, dear. An’ you can come along this way. ’Tis the way found by himself, poor natural; but he described of it to me proper clever. ‘You goes along,’ ses ’e, ‘to that there medder bordering the road. An’ close by there,’ ses ’e, ‘you’ll see a wide ditch-like way, with nettles growing thick so as no one notices. Dry it be in summer, and deep it be; and you goes along careful; and there be room to walk nigh upstanding all way through medder till you comes to the wood what belongs to St. Benedick’s school and sees the flowers. Aye, they’re grand to watch, a-laying secret in the ditch,’ ses he, ‘but the young ladies is grander; but go careful there fer fear they sees you, and crouch and crawl.’ Well, I promises him to take that there way, it being a full mile quicker an’ nearer. So, see here, Miss, step along now; for you’re safe with me, as you knows, and the lad’s right-down bad wi’ calling for you.”

Hardly knowing what she did, Betty followed Anna Grimes’s lead. Parting the great tangled mass of grasses and bracken at the side of the wood, the woman displayed the opening of a wide disused ditch. She crouched down and started off, while Betty followed on behind.

Here was a thrilly adventure, indeed, if she had had time to think of the journey in that light as she followed her guide. But Betty’s mind was working too rapidly as she made two and two into a sensible four, while thinking out the information scraps which Mrs. Grimes had given her.

For “he” must be the poor boy of the adventure on that day when she had clambered out of Witch’s Wood and taken his part against the village urchins who had been ill-treating him. But what could he know of the lost Cup? “Well”—a light seemed to be gradually dawning over things as she thought—“he knew this queer way along from the meadow; and so he’s known the way into our school wood. And he’s been there—Mrs. Grimes says so; and he’s watched me gardening. And he heard me say, on that morning when I was talking to Gerry (and I did say it, for I remember), that I would rather anything happened than that we should lose the Cup. I said, too (I did say it, or else Gerry did), that we wanted to keep it on Midsummer Day. Oh, what comes next? I suppose he mixed it up in his poor head and didn’t understand,” said Betty to herself in a motherly way, just as her thoughts were switched off the matter for a moment by the sound of Anna Grimes’s voice just ahead.

“We’s out of the ditch-like way now, Miss, and here’s the medder. You can stand up now and stretch yerself proper before we goes on. ’Twill on’y be a little ways on now. The van’s down the moor a bit, nearer than we was last time you sees us. Out of the winds—” The queer pilgrimage continued.

It was more than a relief from the strangeness of things when, as the caravan came at last in sight, another vehicle appeared beside it—nothing less ordinary and everyday-looking than the doctor’s car—and the school doctor, Rene’s father, came himself to meet them.

“Tch, tch. What’s this now, Mrs. Grimes? Your husband said you’d gone for the young lady, but I could hardly credit it. Well, I was just off to the school myself, it happens. Now, my dear—Betty Carlyle, isn’t it? you see, I’ve heard all about you from Rene, and I know the story of the Cup, and I’ve heard the end of the tale as told by these good folk here—step straight into my car while I speak to Mrs. Grimes for a minute. And then I’ll take you straight back to St. Benedick’s. This is no place for you, although the good woman no doubt thought she was obeying orders. It appears”—Dr. Fergus turned as he spoke—“that we’ve got your Cup back safely, or, at least, shall have it very shortly, thanks to poor Paul.” His tone changed, and he broke off into a long list of directions as he addressed the van-woman; while Betty, with her heart beating wildly with excitement, possessed her soul in patience until he should be free to appear.

It was almost half an hour later, while driving her back to the school, that Dr. Fergus explained further. “In Witch’s Wood; the poor lad’s hidden it there—in the cottage. It seems that he found out the fact (which no one else among the village people appears to have found out, by the way) that there aren’t such things as ghosts! And he’s evidently adopted the so-called ‘haunted cottage’ there, and has used it as a kind of refuge. He’s got a bad granny, poor boy, who doesn’t do her best by him, and he’s taken to camping there. Plays his pipe, too, there; he’s a bit of a musician, poor lad, as these naturals often are. Spoke of the fairies—well, poor lad, poor lad, he’s got paid out with a bad attack of rheumatic fever for any trespassing he’s done. Oh yes, the Cup’s there, evidently as safe as can be, in the little house. He says he was guarding it for you, Miss Betty; and for you, by the way, he seems to have a genuine devotion. He told me that you wanted it kept safe till Midsummer Day!”

Betty felt a lump in her throat. “He—he’s muddled up what I said! But I did say it,” she whispered; “and it’s kind of him to want to help. I did very little for him, you know. Only——”

“Eh? Well, I daresay you’ll be able to do a bit more in the future, then. I understand that all you Guides are out to help others in need of help, and here’s a genuine case. He’ll be ill for some time, but we’ll get him moved to the infirmary, and he’ll be proud of a little notice, I’m sure. See—” the doctor suddenly slowed down—“here’s my idea, Miss Betty,” said he. “It happens that we’re on the border of Witch’s Wood now, and I’ve the right to go in, I believe. Suppose we leave the car in charge of the reputed witch,” continued Dr. Fergus, clearing the fence as nimbly as a boy and holding out a friendly hand to Betty; “unless, of course, you’d rather stay outside.”

Stay outside! It was with a wildly beating heart, in which excitement and eagerness mingled, that Betty followed the doctor through the wood.

There stood the cottage little and lonely as ever, as they gained the clearing. There, as they crossed the threshold, lay, as before, a rough bordering of flowers and ferns. They had been picked two days ago and were withered now. And there, as they entered the little inner room—filled with withered flowers, surrounded with withered flowers, and shinily polished as ever it had been when in charge of the Daisy patrol—was the Guide Cup!

Somehow or other at that instant Betty’s eyes filled with tears. Her heart felt red-hot, and she couldn’t speak. Here was the lost Cup; but she could only remember poor Paul who had tried to “do something” for her; poor Paul who had evidently watched her devotedly from the hollow hiding-place in the ditch while she cleaned the Cup, who had listened to her words, and who had put his own simple construction on them, and who had, so unintentionally, helped to bring so much trouble!

The doctor may have noticed her tears, or he may not; he said nothing, but he bent down and lifted up the Cup. “We’ll take it back, just as it is,” he said, “and explain to Miss Carey. Oh yes, I know all the ins and outs of the story from Rene, and I believe you Daisies will hold the Cup next year after all now, because——”

But Betty burst in with a choky half-sob. “It isn’t that. I don’t believe the Daisies will even think of that when they see it again! I don’t believe any of the Guides will, though it will be so lovely to have it. It’s—oh, it’s all so beautiful and sad, all mixed up together, for the Cup really to come back on Cup Day, and for me to be invested with the Cup there, and yet for Paul—” She broke off. “That’s what we’ll think of,” she choked.

“Look here, then,” said the doctor, placing the Cup in her hands. “Here’s an idea. I understand from Rene that you’re giving up mascoting to-day when you become a Tenderfoot, eh? Well, there’s poor Paul, who hasn’t any one to care much about him, and who seems to think an uncommon lot of you Guides; suppose you adopt the poor chap as mascot after this, eh?” The doctor’s voice was very cheery and kind. “I know Miss Carey, and I rather think——”

“Oh!” cried Betty in her most motherly voice, clasping the silver Cup with its burden of withered flowers while tears of happiness and trouble chased themselves down her cheeks. “Oh! do let’s hurry back to St. Benedick’s. I truly believe that Sybil and all the Guides will say that that would make everything beautiful and right!”

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THE PRESS OF THE PUBLISHERS.