Sybil bent down suddenly and kissed Betty on the very spot on her flushed cheek where the big tear had dried itself up a little while before.
“Good-night, little Mascot,” said Sybil. Then she waved her hand to the rest of them and was gone.
Betty fell asleep that night feeling happier than she would half an hour earlier have believed it possible that she could be so soon. The loneliness was gone. Miss Carey’s promise was coming true—she didn’t feel out of things any more in the very least; and, more than that, she was somehow quite, quite sure that she never could feel out of things in the same way again at school. For her wish had come true, and she was to be one of the Daisies!
And the rest of the Guides—but particularly the Daisies—were to show her “what to do” all in good time, so Sybil had said. And to-night she had to do nothing, because Sybil had said so, but just to “love” the idea of it, and to go to sleep and dream nice dreams. That had been Miss Carey’s message to her.
So, as she lay there, “peace came dropping slow.” It seemed easier, with the quiet atmosphere of the old house round her, and with the memory of Miss Carey’s quiet smile, and with the memory of the feeling still of Sybil’s strong restful arm round her, to leave even the home worries resting quietly too in Auntie’s kind, capable hands, without fuss and fret.
“I—do—hope,” Betty found herself thinking drowsily, “that Dad’s cocoa—” But even that fear didn’t last long. She was one of the first in the dormitory to fall asleep that night.
And, as the headmistress had wished, her dreams were glad, each one. And the gladder, and the less lonely perhaps, for the fact that each dream was a jumble of home things and school things, of home people and school people, forming somehow a perfectly natural whole, and fitting in together in the most happily marvellous way!
CHAPTER VI
THE GUIDE CUP
“Bet-ty!” called Gerry.