CHAPTER XIV
THE PIONEER PICNIC
The days had gone by since the tracking expedition; but nothing had been heard of the Cup. The junior Daisies had walked warily, however, since then—the unfortunate result of their excessive zeal having been a lesson to each one of the four girls concerned.
Perhaps to Mona and Rene particularly, however; for, until that afternoon, they had been rather inclined to look down a pair of superior noses at the Mascot whose unthinking ways had more than probably brought about the loss of the Cup. Now they themselves had brought trouble by their own lack of thought; trouble, too, out of which the Mascot had, by a kind of miracle, delivered them. Sybil, when the account of the afternoon’s adventures was duly rendered to her, spared no sympathy at all for the delinquents concerned.
“You went after the caravan and asked—” Her voice sounded incredulously cold. “You dared to?”
“Not if they’d stolen it, Sybil. Honest Injun, we didn’t ask them that. They just took it that way!”
“And wouldn’t you have ‘taken it that way’ if you had been in their place? It comes to exactly the same thing. I don’t wonder that their pride was hurt. Have you no imagination at all? Miss Carey must know what you have told me, of course. It’s just unthinkable that Guides should have done it—even Tenderfoots. Yes, as you say, Betty has proved herself a mascot this afternoon. It was very strange, in one way, that she should have happened to know them; but it’s not strange in another. She might have known them, and yet—” Sybil stopped. “Do you see what I mean?” she said.
“You mean that it wasn’t because they’d seen her before, but because she’d been so Guidy to the baby that made them feel friendly,” put in Gerry.
“That’s exactly it, Gerry. Betty was ‘Guidy,’ as you called it, then—even before she knew us, or joined the Daisies. It’s nice to think that her enrolment as a real Tenderfoot will not be long in coming now.”
Sybil gave Betty a very kind smile, for she knew, as did all Betty’s other acquaintances, that the Mascot was straining every nerve and working with all her heart and soul towards the moment of her investiture, which had been arranged for on the next Midsummer Day. That Midsummer Day was also Cup Day, Betty knew as well as the rest. Midsummer Day was coming very close now, too, and it seemed likely that there could be no tangible trophy at hand when the award took place. The Daisies had all faced the fact that they must be passed over as “best patrol” in favour of the Foxgloves, who ranked next in order of merit; that next year the Foxglove patrol must take first place in Hall under the little empty ebony stand seemed only just and fair. But they were working extra hard, every one of them; and if Mona and Rene had forgotten once to “hasten slowly” during their experience on the moor, that very experience had served as a lesson in the Guide law which neither of them would forget.