“Gerry’s just behind. She stopped for something. You’re Betty Carlyle, aren’t you? Rene and I have been longing to talk to you.” Thus Mona in a breathless torrent. “I tried to smile across at tea, because we don’t talk over the table; only you weren’t looking. And then came Miss Carey’s speech, of course, and then came the Guide meeting, and so—” The curtains of Mona’s cubicle had been drawn right back, and she was waving a hair-brush while Rene, although it was evidently difficult for her to get a word in edgeways, smiled and nodded in friendly fashion, as though in perfect agreement with her friend’s sentiments.
Rene was small and dark; Mona was tall, and owned a corn-coloured pigtail. They were both jolly looking, Betty thought; though perhaps not quite so specially jolly as Geraldine. The latter entered the bedroom three minutes after the other pair, panting as she came.
“I was dreadfully afraid I’d be late. I waited to ask Sybil something after Guides. You see——”
“‘Guides’?” It was the second time the word had been used. So the girls had been “Guiding,” had they, during the half-hour which Betty had spent unpacking!
“Guiding! Rather.” Rene and Mona took up the word and smiled. “Gerry says you’re not one. She was telling Sybil. Sybil said she knew already, and she said, too, that it’s a dreadful pity we can’t fit you into the Daisies. But, of course, we can’t possibly, because—” Mona stopped short and shook her hair out of its pigtail, while Rene took up the tale.
“Nor into the Foxgloves either, can they? They’re as full as us. And the Buttercups too. Cowslips could have taken you in last term; but Bunty’s here now. She came last half-term, and as she’d been a Guide before, she went straight in.”
“Oh!” cried Betty disappointedly. She knew suddenly how very much she had wanted to be a Daisy, if only because then she would definitely belong to something which held Sybil and Gerry too. She looked across at Gerry, who hadn’t contributed one word yet to the conversation, but who was labouring solidly with her mop of hair. There was rather an excited look in her eyes, however, as they met Betty’s pair of disappointed ones. “I did so hope—” began Betty quaveringly.
“There’s eight girls in the Daisies, you see, already,” said Mona informatively. “And there’s eight in each of the other patrols, because this term there’s thirty-three at school; and four eights make thirty-two. Of course, you’re an extra, counting that way. Sybil said that if there’d been more new girls we might have had another patrol; but with only you——!”
Mona was well-meaning if tactless; she did not guess that Betty felt a gulp in her throat at the words.
“Not, of course, that you could exactly be in any patrol yet,” went on Mona in a would-be comforting tone, “because you don’t know anything! Not the Guide law, do you? Nor the promises? Nor the Union Jack? Nor even knots? So——”