“Took it!” almost shouted Gerry in an outraged tone. “Took it! Do you mean to say that Sybil—or any Guide—would think that of any other? You may be only a mascot,” went on Gerry, “but you’ve been at Benedick’s a month, and you ought to know.”
“Oh.” Betty was half-relieved but almost half-frightened, too, by the vehemence of her friend’s tone. “Why——?”
It was with Gerry’s next words that the full force of the situation struck her. “It’s not that Sybil thinks that; she couldn’t. We none of us could. And you couldn’t have done it; none of us could. But the Cup was taken by some one, I suppose, who saw you with it. A tramp, perhaps, creeping in while we were at dinner. And the Cup is in the Daisies’ charge this year; and our patrol is responsible for it.”
“But it will be found. It couldn’t have gone far. I put it back quite carefully though I was hurrying, so it couldn’t have slipped off the ledge, or I would have thought it was just that. Gerry, you don’t mean that, if it isn’t found, the patrol will lose marks?”
“Marks!” repeated Gerry almost scornfully. “As though marks were everything!” She stopped.
The others were not so reticent. On the arrival of the two last-comers on the cricket field the excited looks of the players were hard to bear. When the game was over, too, and they all trooped back through the grounds and on to the terrace for tea, the same subject was on every lip.
“Is the Cup found?”
It was not, as Doron, prefect in charge of the meal, told them all tersely. She did not encourage conversation in the matter, but it would have been as easy for her to stem a mill-stream as to quench the curiosity of the juniors. Cowslips, Foxgloves, Buttercups, Daisies—there was horror in every eye. Then it was gone. It hadn’t just slipped down or anything when Betty—Every one of them stopped short at the utterance of her name. Not one of them blamed her in words. But there was a look of horrified amazement in their eyes as they gazed at her, which was worse, Betty felt, to bear than anything at all. A greater “worst” came, however, when tea was over.
She was collecting her goods and chattels in a corner of the study. Her eyes were filled with tears by this time, and she had found it difficult for that reason to distinguish between the names of the subjects written on the labels of her books. She was still, perforce, then, gropingly trying to mop her eyes when—the rest having found their way preparation-roomwards—two prefects entered the study for reasons of their own.
Doron and Sylvia talking together.