“It would be nice, we thought, in so very many ways for you to be attached to the Daisies. Gerry and Mona and Rene, you see, are all Daisies; and you share their room. You are nearly the youngest girl at St. Benedick’s, too, and are likely to be in the lowest class, of course; and you will find several Daisies there. Of course, any girl in the company would help you—or they wouldn’t be worth their salt as Guides—but it is nice and friendly to work together with one’s own patrol. Well, then—” Sybil stopped for a moment.
“After our meeting to-night,” she went on, “Gerry stopped to speak to me”—Sybil gave Gerry a quick but very friendly smile—“and she said that she had thought of a way of linking you on with the Daisies. It sounded such a good idea when I heard it; but, of course, I had to speak to Miss Carey first. For she, you see, Betty, is head of the Guides as well as headmistress of the school. I went straight to her; and Miss Carey agreed with Gerry and me that it is a splendid idea. You, Betty, are to be the mascot of our patrol!”
“There!” shouted Gerry, dancing about like a dimpled dervish.
“A ‘mascot’?” said Betty, smiling but in a half-bewildered fashion. Mascots were lucky things, she knew; but— Everybody liked mascots, of course. But how could she be one?
“Lots of regiments in the war had mascots,” said Sybil. “And companies of Guides have them, too, sometimes. A patrol mascot is a special pet of the patrol to which it belongs always. Not that a mascot is usually a girl, of course. I’ve never heard of a little girl being a mascot before. That’s where Gerry’s good idea came in! Well, Betty, what do you say to it?” Sybil gave her a friendly little shake.
“I’d—simply—love—to be—it,” said Betty, gulping. “But what would I have to do?”
“‘Do!’ You’ll have to ‘do’ nothing, little Helter-skelter, except just to ‘love’ being it,” laughed Sybil. “That will be enough for to-night anyhow. There will be things to do, and plenty of them; but we’ll all love to explain them to you one by one. And, in the meanwhile, I’ve come up here because Miss Carey wanted you to know about it to-night. For we like little new girls to have nice dreams!” Sybil laughed outright. “You are to be one of the Daisies—our Daisy mascot. And every one of us—you, Mona, and you, Rene, and Gerry, too, as well as the older Daisies,”—Sybil looked round the listening group—“will feel a special sort of feeling about Betty, and will try to explain to her what Guiding really means, and will try to be extra-specially good Guides just because of having her. And there’s not going to be any more talk about Lone Guides,” said Sybil, getting up; “nor of loneliness of any kind—not at St. Benedick’s. For you don’t belong to the Daisy Patrol only, Betty, you belong to the whole company; and every Guide in it, you know, is a friend to every other Guide, you see.”
Sybil bent down suddenly and kissed Betty.