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.