BETTY KEEPS A SECRET
“I say,” remarked the inhabitants of Dormitory Three in chorus.
Not that they were assembled in the dormitory, but “hasten slowly”
time was just over on the afternoon of the day following Betty’s
adventure in the wood.
“Hasten slowly” time occurred every day, and occupied the hour
immediately following each midday meal. The name had originated
after the utterance of an apt remark by one of the middle school
girls who had discovered that the hour’s rest enforced by rule at St.
Benedick’s was not waste of valuable time after all, but tended
rather, in the end, to help towards a fuller use of energy. To new
pupils hailing from other and perhaps more “go-ahead” schools it was
something of a surprise to find that from two o’clock to three every
one of the middle and junior girls was required to endure or enjoy an
hour’s _dolce far niente_--stretched out in summer time on the lawns,
and in winter time on rugs in the Oak Hall.
Of all the strange ways of school Betty had found this one, at first,
the hardest to bear. Lying perfectly still on a sunny lawn during
the first two afternoons her thoughts had travelled homewards at an
alarming pace. She had longed to be up and “doing something.” And
to know that sixty minutes of this home-sick time was ahead of her
daily until the end of term seemed more than she could bear. On the
third day, however, to her vast surprise, she had fallen asleep in
the middle of a torturing thought as to whether Auntie had remembered
to get those shoes of Jan’s both soled and heeled, and had wakened in
amazement to find Gerry at her side while the church clock struck
three. But after that experience the spell had been broken somehow;
Betty had grown to look forward to the “hasten slowly” hour as one of
the most restful in her restful days.
It was a good time to repeat the Guide law and the promises, sleepily
and more sleepily until they almost changed to dreams. It was a good
time to think thoughts that, otherwise, the business of the day might
have ruled out altogether. Betty thought of the fairy piper music
sometimes in this hour; and remembered what Sybil had said, and
wondered. On this particular afternoon she had been thinking
curiously, quietly, and almost lovingly of her strange secret
adventure in the witch’s cottage.
And she had decided--had quite decided--that the adventure there was
one of the things Sybil had meant. “Some things are loveliest when
they are kept secret,” the head girl had said. “Things that
sometimes happen when one is alone. It takes the bloom off them to
talk of them.” Betty remembered every word, though she had not
understood at the time what the words could mean. Now she was
beginning to understand, though; so she told herself. For if she
were to tell any one, the telling, somehow, would spoil her
adventure-memory. That secret of the witch’s cottage--which had
seemed so desolate outside, but which, inside, had been beautiful,
cared for by some strange, mysterious magic--was her own. Perhaps
the piper of dreams was connected with it. Perhaps----
Betty was still drowsily and happily “perhapsing” on the subject
under the shade of one of the great old trees in the grounds, when
the prefect whose duty that afternoon it was to preside over the
juniors’ quiet hour gave the signal for them to rise.
“I say, Betty, tell us. We’ve not had a single chance to ask you
about yesterday afternoon till now. You never said a word about it
in the dormitory; but the other girls know. There’s plenty of time
while we get our letter-writing things. You can even tell us while
we write them. Miss Drury says we can write letters under the trees
this afternoon because it’s too hot indoors.”
“I’m not going to tell _anything_ while I write letters,” said Betty
with startled conviction. Sunday afternoons were packed full, as she
rightly considered, since there were five anxious, loving folk at
home to be reassured concerning her health and happiness, and regaled
with tit-bits of weekly information. “And besides,” she continued
hurriedly, “there’s nothing to tell.”
“There is.” Mona and Rene were convinced on that point. “About the
boy whose face you were patching up when Drina and Maud came along.
They said it showed you’d make a good Guide. And however came you to
be in the road at all?” finished up Mona.
[Illustration: “And that Robby-boy saw me climbing out.”]
“Anybody in the world, not only Guides,” said Betty with rising
colour, “would help a boy with a cut cheek, I should trust and
hope--especially when he was frightened, and seeing that he was sort
of queer, you know. When Drina and Maud came along, though, it was
_they_ who helped him more than me.”
“They know First Aid, being senior Guides, of course,” put in Mona
informatively. “And Drina anyway, being head of the Foxgloves, has
heaps of badges. She would know simply _anything_! It happens that
she knew who the boy was. It was just Robby--old Granny Beaver’s
boy. I know him too, quite well; they call him a ‘natural.’ We
often get hot water from that cottage in the holidays when we go for
picnics at home.”
“He was dreadfully frightened, whoever he was,” said Betty again;
“but I think he was brave too.”
“Brave _and_ frightened?” said Rene. “Well, anyway Drina told
Eve--for I heard her--that when they came up you were mending his
cheek; and he was crying.”
“It wasn’t that kind of bravery I meant.” But Betty stuck to her
point. “He did cry, I know. He was crying, too, when the boys were
teasing him. But--well, I’d got into Witch’s Wood by mistake, you
see,” she continued hurriedly. “I’ve explained to Drina, and she
understands how. And that Robby-boy saw me climbing out. The other
boys ran off because they were frightened of me--thinking I was the
witch, I suppose,” went on Betty, “and never looked back. But
he--well, he might have run, too, I suppose; but he didn’t. He was
_brave_, like I said. He even forgot his cuts and things and stopped
crying, and kept on telling me how spooky and frightening and all
that the wood is. And he was shaking with fright himself all the
time. I could see it. And _yet_ he went on.”
By the emphasis of her utterance her convictions carried weight. The
others nodded.
“Drina said that,” agreed Mona. “She said he kept begging you not to
go back and get spooked by the witch. Of course he’s sort of simple;
and I expect his granny frightened him about it when he was little.
She’s rather hateful. Perhaps he felt grateful to you for taking his
part and wanted to pay you back. Didn’t he follow you home?”
“Yes, poor darling,” said Betty in her most motherly tone--“and
simply wouldn’t go, and wouldn’t go. And even when he _did_ go he
kept saying that he’d do something for me some day. That’s all,”
finished up Betty, as, cumbered with a writing pad and two sharp
pencils, she turned lawnwards again. “It wasn’t an adventure,
except, of course----”
She stopped.
Except the part of the afternoon when she had found the witch’s
cottage. But she had decided to say nothing about that. Not to Mona
and Rene; not even to Gerry; no, and not even in the weekly letter
home. It was to be her own secret “with all the lovely bloom left
on,” as Sybil had advised.
Her experience in the wood, however, even though a part of it was
known only to herself, came into active consideration at the next
meeting of the senior Guides.
“It just shows how useful it is for the juniors to understand
tracking,” remarked Sybil. “A less sensible girl than Betty Carlyle
might have got right into the heart of the wood. And perhaps, if the
others had been telling her silly tales, she would have been more
frightened than she was. There’s the cottage there, you see, I
believe, still. That cottage which is supposed to contain a ghost.”
“A cottage, Sybil?” Some of the seniors were not even aware of its
existence.
“Oh yes; quite a village story. And Rene, since she lives in the
district, knows about it. No Guide believes in ghosts, naturally;
but Betty is only such a raw recruit, and there is a cottage there.
It’s out of bounds, of course, and lies right in the middle of the
wood, I believe; and, our directions being to keep on this side of
the broken paling, it’s out of bounds to us. But Betty knew nothing
about that apparently, and went straight on.”
“She said nothing about any cottage, however,” put in Drina. “When
Maud and I found her patching up the boy she was at her most
energetic--apparently comforting him on account of his own fears of
the wood, and assuring him that she was not a witch herself! He had
been telling her his fears; that’s what Maud and I thought.”
“But all the same,” Sybil spoke up, “I am going to make some extra
practice time for all the junior Daisies. Betty says that she tried
to follow ‘sign,’--evidently acting on Eve’s instructions--but that
she could not find any! Well, they shall have a tracking practice
next week.”
“You mean to keep the Cup next year, then, Sybil!”
“Let the best patrol win, of course; but I mean ours to be the best
if dogged will do it,” said the head of the school.
The junior Daisies, therefore, on the following Friday afternoon were
thrilled and enthralled at the appearance of a special notice on the
notice-board of their patrol. There would be, it appeared, an
expedition on the following Saturday week, captained by the head.
All Daisies were expected to attend, and--before the practice--they
were requested to “make themselves as ready as possible” for the
afternoon’s lesson, which would, it appeared, include exercise in
spooring and tracking.
“But what can _I_ do?” inquired Betty rather helplessly in the
dormitory that night. For her recent efforts to extricate herself
from the wood by means of applying the principles laid down by Eve
had met with scant success. And she was terribly anxious not to
disgrace the patrol to which she was attached.
“Sybil won’t expect you to know _anything_. _We’re_ going to read
up,” informed Mona and Rene.
But to the Mascot the blue Guide book was as yet forbidden ground.
Betty would in feverish eagerness, as Sybil probably guessed, have
read and re-read the blue book through, and in trying to work out
every principle at one and the same time have failed miserably.
“Nothing was to be gained by snatching,” as Miss Carey had said on
the first night. Betty’s knowledge must come by slow degrees.
“I tell you what,” said Gerry, noticing her friend’s unhappy face,
“we’ll both practise together. There’s a week before the expedition,
and you’ll learn some things anyway by then. There’s a sandy place
in the grounds here where we’ve worked at making footprints, and
we’ll start on that. Different sized ones, and standing still and
running ones, you know.”
Gerry dimpled in a friendly way.
This sounded delicious to the Mascot; in spite of the rather superior
looks of Mona and Rene, Betty’s eyes danced at the thought. If she
had known how very real and unexpectedly thrilling the tracking
expedition at the end of the week would turn out to be, it is likely
that she would not have longed for it quite as whole-heartedly and
delightedly as she did.