Sybil took no notice of them either. Coming in, she closed the door softly, and stood just inside. “I have Miss Carey’s leave to come,” she said quietly; “and Nurse knows too. Now which—” she stopped short and looked round the room—“is Betty Carlyle’s cubicle?”
“This!” said Gerry in a triumphant voice, pointing with her brush, and speaking in a tone of suppressed ecstasy.
In another moment Sybil had stepped across the polished floor, through the curtains, and inside.
Miracle of miracles, too, she seated herself with a smile on Betty’s bed; miracle of miracles, one of her arms went round Betty’s waist as the little new girl stood there, brush in hand, still trying to swallow down the remembrance of her ignorance “of everything,” and still fighting against the idea of being a “Lone Guide.”
But everything seemed to change suddenly with the appearance of the head girl, and with the comfortable feeling of Sybil’s arm. Betty gave one gulp and didn’t mind. Somehow she knew that Sybil had come to put things right for her.
“Miss Carey said it would be best for me to come to-night instead of waiting till to-morrow,” said Sybil, giving Betty’s slim figure a little hug. “She thought that the news I’ve come to bring would give her nice dreams!”
“‘Nice dreams!’” Rene and Mona had by this time forgotten the existence of such things as brushes and combs. They had turned, like plants towards the sunlight, to stare through their drawn curtains at Sybil as she spoke. Geraldine, though she was gazing too, was dimpling so much at the same time, that Betty, catching sight of her face, guessed suddenly that Gerry must know what Sybil had come to say.
“It was Gerry’s idea,” said Sybil (Gerry stopped dimpling instantly and began to brush her hair vigorously for a moment); “Gerry’s altogether. If she hadn’t thought of it, perhaps I never should. Not that I was not as disappointed as she was, I think, that we couldn’t fit Betty into the Daisy Patrol——”
Oh! It was something about the Guides. Were they going to fit her into the Daisies after all?
“We’re a full patrol, you see, Betty,” Sybil went on, speaking in her quiet, pretty voice. “Each patrol in our company has eight girls; and there were thirty-two girls here this term before you came. Well, that makes you—who bring the numbers up to thirty-three—a dear little extra one.” Sybil stopped.