“Yes, poor darling,” said Betty in her most motherly tone—“and simply wouldn’t go, and wouldn’t go. And even when he did go he kept saying that he’d do something for me some day. That’s all,” finished up Betty, as, cumbered with a writing pad and two sharp pencils, she turned lawnwards again. “It wasn’t an adventure, except, of course——”
She stopped.
Except the part of the afternoon when she had found the witch’s cottage. But she had decided to say nothing about that. Not to Mona and Rene; not even to Gerry; no, and not even in the weekly letter home. It was to be her own secret “with all the lovely bloom left on,” as Sybil had advised.
Her experience in the wood, however, even though a part of it was known only to herself, came into active consideration at the next meeting of the senior Guides.
“It just shows how useful it is for the juniors to understand tracking,” remarked Sybil. “A less sensible girl than Betty Carlyle might have got right into the heart of the wood. And perhaps, if the others had been telling her silly tales, she would have been more frightened than she was. There’s the cottage there, you see, I believe, still. That cottage which is supposed to contain a ghost.”
“A cottage, Sybil?” Some of the seniors were not even aware of its existence.
“Oh yes; quite a village story. And Rene, since she lives in the district, knows about it. No Guide believes in ghosts, naturally; but Betty is only such a raw recruit, and there is a cottage there. It’s out of bounds, of course, and lies right in the middle of the wood, I believe; and, our directions being to keep on this side of the broken paling, it’s out of bounds to us. But Betty knew nothing about that apparently, and went straight on.”
“She said nothing about any cottage, however,” put in Drina. “When Maud and I found her patching up the boy she was at her most energetic—apparently comforting him on account of his own fears of the wood, and assuring him that she was not a witch herself! He had been telling her his fears; that’s what Maud and I thought.”
“But all the same,” Sybil spoke up, “I am going to make some extra practice time for all the junior Daisies. Betty says that she tried to follow ‘sign,’—evidently acting on Eve’s instructions—but that she could not find any! Well, they shall have a tracking practice next week.”
“You mean to keep the Cup next year, then, Sybil!”