“I didn’t think; and I mean, I was trying to ‘keep the bloom on’; because it all seemed so strange and lovely for magic to be keeping the cottage so sweet and flowery. And I thought ‘I shan’t tell any one’; and then the idea came to me afterwards that perhaps I oughtn’t to have stepped inside, and that the magic had punished me for trespassing by taking away the Cup, you see,” finished up Betty lamely. “Oh, I know it sounds silly! I told you you would want to laugh. And it has ‘taken the bloom off’ to tell it,” said Betty, almost in tears. “But when the Pioneers did see a light in the wood, and did hear the fairy piper, why, I thought I ought—for the sake of every one——”
“I’m not laughing,” said Gerry; and she certainly wasn’t. She was staring straight at Betty as though she could make neither head nor tail of her story. “As to going into Witch’s Wood, though, to-night, and looking in the cottage to see whether the Cup’s there, you simply can’t do that! And you would never get leave to do it, I’m sure, if you asked. Truly, I do think it’s all rather—well, far-fetched,” she finished up, wrinkling her brows.
“Oh dear,” Betty sighed. But in the light of her friend’s common-sensible remarks she was beginning to think how helter-skelter again her imaginings must have been. After all, perhaps it was just a coincidence that the Pioneers had heard music in the night. The sounds might have come from the far road, as some one had suggested, and the light might have issued from a hundred other more likely sources than that of a magic lamp! Gerry was probably right; but Betty sighed.
“If only—” said she. “I somehow don’t feel as though it could be right for me to wear my Tenderfoot’s badge until the Cup is found!”
She went upstairs soberly enough, and got into bed that night without a word. To-morrow was Midsummer Day, and the Cup was lost; to-morrow she was to be admitted into the Daisy patrol. But— There was a very great deal of twisting and turning before Betty fell asleep that night.
She woke early, too, on the next morning. Half-past six o’clock was sounding from the village church tower as she opened her eyes and became conscious of the scents and sounds and sights of the early Midsummer morning. To-day was the day of the investiture, but the Cup was still lost! To-day she was to be enrolled as one of the Daisies; but owing to her own carelessness the Cup which her patrol had held in trust for a year was lost not only to them but to the entire company of Guides. Betty was blinking back tears, hidden as she was in the fastness of her own cubicle, while the rest of the dormitory still slumbered round her, when she suddenly remembered Sybil’s words of the wood, “Don’t fuss about it!”
Betty wouldn’t fuss, she told herself. She pulled herself together, though, with a considerable effort. To lie in bed without worrying was too difficult; she got up very quickly and began to dress.
It was quite usual at St. Benedick’s for any Guide who woke early to appear in the gardens before breakfast-time. Betty had often risen early before, but never so early as on this particular day. “Eve said the sweet peas had got blown about and the stakes needed looking at,” she reminded herself. “Well, that will be something that I can do! There may be other girls in the gardens too!”
There were not, however. As it happened, Betty found herself working alone; and for a while she gardened on busily and happily enough while the school still slept.
It was just as she was standing back and surveying her work with her face turned from the fence which divided the gardens from the school wood that she suddenly heard a voice. The sound of her own name, too, called in no uncertain tones from the bushes of the wood.