Betty’s face grew longer and longer. She seemed to be going farther and farther into loneliness and insignificance at each mention of these qualifications, none of which she possessed. She didn’t know anything, she agreed mentally, that these girls did. If only Gerry would speak up for her it would have been some comfort, but Gerry still steadily brushed at her hair. Betty’s heart gave a leap of hope, however, as Rene, comb suspended, gave a sudden excited cry.
“I tell you what Sybil might let you do!”
“What?” inquired Betty breathlessly.
“There’s a thing you could be! It’s in the Guiding Book. You don’t know anything, you see, like Mona says. But you might be a Lone Guide, I believe.”
A big tear, the existence of which she had been hitherto unaware of, suddenly half-blinded one of Betty’s eyes. For she didn’t want, she told herself, to be any more “alone” than she felt already. She didn’t know what Guiding was, one bit; but she felt quite sure that she didn’t want to be a Lone one! The very sound of the word made her feel so dreadfully home-sick that she couldn’t believe Miss Carey’s promise to her could come true, and that this time to-morrow she would be feeling like one of the rest. As she turned to look in the glass and to wink away the tear, there came a tap at the door, and Gerry, springing suddenly forward, gave a squeak of joy.
“There!” said Gerry, throwing a dimply look at Betty. “I knew Sybil would manage it. I knew she’d come!”
CHAPTER V
THE DAISY MASCOT
It was Sybil’s face that looked in at the door. She was smiling, and her eyes were bright. “May I come in?” she said.
“Sybil!” arose a chorus of surprise, and Betty realized at once from the sound of amazement in the tones of Rene and Mona that this apparition was as unexpected to them as to her. A dormitory visit from the head girl must evidently be considered in the light of a kind of miracle. Their brushes hung suspended in mid-air; they tore back the curtains of their cubicles feverishly for a better view; their eyes and mouths were open. Only Gerry, still dimpling secretly to herself, took no part in the squeaks and squeals of wonder.