“I tell you what,” continued Gerry, suddenly breaking in on her thoughts—“you know quite enough now to go on alone. Practise running and then walking, and compare the marks you leave. And then think out other things to do for yourself. I’m going back to those slugs now; you don’t mind, do you?”
“No,” said Betty thoughtfully. “And I’ll come back presently myself and do slugs too.”
But when at last, after an interval of about half an hour, Betty did return, it was to find that Gerry’s gardening time was over and her friend gone. The slugs, too, seemed gone, owing to Gerry’s careful search, and Betty, being now restricted by Eve in her activities, found herself with time on her hands and to spare.
“I’d rather do anything than lose the Cup on Midsummer Day,” she said half-aloud, leaning over the fence.
The mere thought of the Cup caused an expedition to look at it through the window of the Oak Room, where, on the first day of term, she had first caught sight of it. She had peeped at it nearly every day since then during prayers in the morning. She had been entrusted with the rubbing-up of the trophy, too, under Sybil’s direction, every Saturday when the older Guides were at definite Guide work, and the rubbing-up of the Cup was perhaps the most cherished of the Mascot’s jobs. As she peered through the Oak Room window a sudden idea struck her.
“I’ll clean it now,” declared Betty. “On Saturday we’ll be tracking at Guide time, and it won’t get done. I saw Sybil look up at it to-day after roll-call as though she was wondering if it looked quite shiny enough. Well, it shall be. I know where the chamois is, and I can do it out here. I cleaned it in the garden last week at Guiding time while the rest were doing First Aid bandaging.”
It seemed a splendid way of using up time and superfluous energy, for the garden seemed in no need of mothering, and Betty’s whole heart was centred just then in the Cup itself. She sat there, lost to the world of everything, on the strip of grass between the gardens, polishing away.
“Sybil said I did it pretty well last time. Well, I’ll do it better now,” remarked she. “I’d not lose you for anything!” She gave it a little motherly pat. “Oh, to think that it only belongs to the Daisies till Midsummer Day, and that then, perhaps, we’ll lose it!” She gave a sigh and surveyed her work from a distance.
“I’ll put you back before the sun takes the glitter off you,” remarked Betty, as though addressing one of the twins. Then she broke off and rose hastily to her feet as, from the house, sounding musically peremptory, came the note of the dinner-gong. Certainly the time was no longer her own.
“Oh!” cried Betty in dismay. “Suppose I lose the patrol a mark!”