She felt rather shy of the second girl too, and she was relieved when Sybil took up the conversation. “Any age is Guide age,” said she with a jolly look, “as you’ll soon decide. I only wish I could fit you into the Daisies; but I’m afraid we’re a tight pack.” Then she turned and, without looking at Betty again, began to speak to her companion about matters which seemed “just as Greeky,” as Betty decided, “as before.”
But in spite of the “Greekiness” of things Betty’s heart was beginning to feel quite light. There was an excited sparkle in her eyes as she sat back against the cushions.
For Sybil had said that Guides were jolly. And Sybil had said that she would make a good Guide, and love it. And Sybil had said that she wished she could fit Betty “into the Daisies!” Betty had no glimmer of an idea what Guides, or patrols, or “Daisies” were; but she was quite certain of one thing, that if Sybil was to be a part of Benedick’s, then, even if Betty herself was shy and stupid at first, she would be sure to grow to love it, because Sybil had said that she would.
CHAPTER II
ARE YOU A DAISY?
Betty was upstairs in the dormitory, battling with a choky feeling that came and went just because of the strangeness of it all. But not altogether an uncomfortable feeling, perhaps, because it was something the same as feelings she had experienced once or twice before when on her way to parties, which, of course, she would be sure, when once she got there, to enjoy! Generally at such times—which had happened very seldom—she had had the twins with her; and there had been always something to do for them on arrival which had made her forget her own shyness. For the choky feeling was shyness, she decided.
She hadn’t felt shy with the older girls in the train, not after Sybil had smiled at her. She had imagined then that everything would be plain-sailing. When the train had slowed down, too, at Woodhurst Station, the two girls had helped Betty out with her luggage, and she—who had been Dad’s right-hand man during the journey to the sea with the twins and baby last summer—had wondered if they remembered that she had told them she was aged thirteen! But after that—well, Sybil with her companion had seemed to melt suddenly into space after telling the new girl kindly to “wait there for Miss Drury,” and Betty had unexpectedly found herself alone again, feeling rather less than thirteen in courage as she seemed suddenly to become encircled by a perfect whirlpool of white panama hats, long brown legs, and dark blue suits.
They were Benedick girls, of course, for they all carried suit-cases with labels. They wore the Benedick hat-band, too, on their hats, and at first each one of them, to Betty’s uninitiated eye, looked identically the same as every other. She noticed presently, however, that although they all seemed garbed exactly alike, some of them wore pigtails and some of them had bobbed heads; that a few of them seemed to glance at her in a friendly fashion too, while others were too busy to notice her at all. And she was beginning, rather despairingly, to try to notice any other distinguishing features there might be, when suddenly, from among the chattering multitude, there emerged “one of the bobbed heads,” as Betty called the individual to herself, and came across.
“How awfully clever of you,” said the newcomer, who seemed about Betty’s own age, with a smile that showed a dimple, “to stand here under the clock straight away. Miss Drury’s down the train looking for new girls. They never guess, of course, where to go. But perhaps you’ve had a sister, or an aunt, or a mother?”
The whole sentence was rather of a mystifying order, but Betty didn’t care for that. She pinned all her hopes on the smile that showed the dimple, and smiled back.