Chapter V: The Daisy Mascot

It was Sybil’s face that looked in at the door. She was smiling, and her eyes were bright. “May I come in?” she said.

“_Sybil!_” arose a chorus of surprise, and Betty realized at once from the sound of amazement in the tones of Rene and Mona that this apparition was as unexpected to them as to her. A dormitory visit from the head girl must evidently be considered in the light of a kind of miracle. Their brushes hung suspended in mid-air; they tore back the curtains of their cubicles feverishly for a better view; their eyes and mouths were open. Only Gerry, still dimpling secretly to herself, took no part in the squeaks and squeals of wonder.

Sybil took no notice of them either. Coming in, she closed the door softly, and stood just inside. “I have Miss Carey’s leave to come,” she said quietly; “and Nurse knows too. Now which--” she stopped short and looked round the room--“is Betty Carlyle’s cubicle?”

“This!” said Gerry in a triumphant voice, pointing with her brush, and speaking in a tone of suppressed ecstasy.

In another moment Sybil had stepped across the polished floor, through the curtains, and inside.

Miracle of miracles, too, she seated herself with a smile on Betty’s bed; miracle of miracles, one of her arms went round Betty’s waist as the little new girl stood there, brush in hand, still trying to swallow down the remembrance of her ignorance “of everything,” and still fighting against the idea of being a “Lone Guide.”

But everything seemed to change suddenly with the appearance of the head girl, and with the comfortable feeling of Sybil’s arm. Betty gave one gulp and didn’t mind. Somehow she knew that Sybil had come to put things right for her.

“Miss Carey said it would be best for me to come to-night instead of waiting till to-morrow,” said Sybil, giving Betty’s slim figure a little hug. “She thought that the news I’ve come to bring would give her nice dreams!”

“‘Nice dreams!’” Rene and Mona had by this time forgotten the existence of such things as brushes and combs. They had turned, like plants towards the sunlight, to stare through their drawn curtains at Sybil as she spoke. Geraldine, though she was gazing too, was dimpling so much at the same time, that Betty, catching sight of her face, guessed suddenly that Gerry must know what Sybil had come to say.

“It was Gerry’s idea,” said Sybil (Gerry stopped dimpling instantly and began to brush her hair vigorously for a moment); “Gerry’s altogether. If she hadn’t thought of it, perhaps I never should. Not that I was not as disappointed as she was, I think, that we couldn’t fit Betty into the Daisy Patrol----”

Oh! It was something about the Guides. Were they going to fit her into the Daisies after all?

“We’re a full patrol, you see, Betty,” Sybil went on, speaking in her quiet, pretty voice. “Each patrol in our company has eight girls; and there were thirty-two girls here this term before you came. Well, that makes you--who bring the numbers up to thirty-three--a dear little extra one.” Sybil stopped.

“There’s a ‘Lone Guide’ she could be. It’s in the Guiding Book. We were just telling her, Sybil,” burst in Mona informatively, “she could work up alone, and----”

Perhaps Sybil felt the sudden shrinking in Betty’s form at the mention of the word as the child stood there under the protection of the head girl’s arm. Perhaps not. But, whether or no, there was suddenly a flash in Sybil’s eye as she spoke.

“A ‘Lone Guide,’ Mona! What an idea! A Lone Guide at St. Benedick’s! With thirty-two Guides here already, who are only too delighted to welcome another! Why, if Betty lived all alone at the North or South Pole, or away at the Back o’ Beyond, she _might_ be a Lone Guide, just till she had a chance to join a company. But _here_! Just as though any one of us would _let_ Betty work at Guiding on her lonesome!”

The strong, gentle arm felt very protective and kind.

“Sorry, Sybil,” murmured Mona, suddenly remembering her brush.

“It was me that thought of the Lone Guide,” piped up Rene. “I was reading about it in the holidays; Mona only followed on, Sybil. And it’s not that we don’t _want_ Betty in the Daisies.”

“_Want_! I should rather think we do want her when Guides are friends of the whole world.” Sybil spoke quite indignantly. “The Cowslips want her, and the Foxgloves too, and the Buttercups, as well as the Daisies---in fact, the whole company wants her. So she mustn’t _think_ of being a Lone Guide again! The only difficulty is--or rather, _was_--that we wondered which patrol she should be attached to as a recruit while she works up for her Tenderfoot badge.”

The words were still strange to Betty, but she didn’t mind now. She was listening breathlessly and happily. “Recruit; Tenderfoot; patrol.” Well, Sybil was there now, ready to help, and already Sybil had promised that she should not be a Lone Guide!

“And then--” the head girl’s voice broke in on Betty’s thoughts. There was quite a joyous sound in Sybil’s tone, as though she had something joyous to say--“it was Gerry who thought of a way.”

The eyes of Mona and Rene turned enviously and wonderingly towards Gerry: Gerry’s eyes were fixed on Sybil. Sybil, addressing her remarks to Betty alone, with her arm still round Betty’s waist, went on,--

“It would be nice, we thought, in so very many ways for you to be attached to the Daisies. Gerry and Mona and Rene, you see, are all Daisies; and you share their room. You are nearly the youngest girl at St. Benedick’s, too, and are likely to be in the lowest class, of course; and you will find several Daisies there. Of course, _any_ girl in the company would help you--or they wouldn’t be worth their salt as Guides--but it _is_ nice and friendly to work together with one’s own patrol. Well, then--” Sybil stopped for a moment.

“After our meeting to-night,” she went on, “Gerry stopped to speak to me”--Sybil gave Gerry a quick but very friendly smile--“and she said that she had thought of a way of linking you on with the Daisies. It sounded such a good idea when I heard it; but, of course, I had to speak to Miss Carey first. For she, you see, Betty, is head of the Guides as well as headmistress of the school. I went straight to her; and Miss Carey agreed with Gerry and me that it is a splendid idea. You, Betty, are to be the _mascot_ of our patrol!”

“_There!_” shouted Gerry, dancing about like a dimpled dervish.

“A ‘mascot’?” said Betty, smiling but in a half-bewildered fashion. Mascots were lucky things, she knew; but-- Everybody liked mascots, of course. But how could _she_ be one?

“Lots of regiments in the war had mascots,” said Sybil. “And companies of Guides have them, too, sometimes. A patrol mascot is a special pet of the patrol to which it belongs always. Not that a mascot is usually a girl, of course. I’ve never heard of a little girl being a mascot before. That’s where Gerry’s good idea came in! Well, Betty, what do you say to it?” Sybil gave her a friendly little shake.

“I’d--simply--love--to be--it,” said Betty, gulping. “But what would I have to _do_?”

“‘_Do!_’ You’ll have to ‘do’ nothing, little Helter-skelter, except just to ‘love’ being it,” laughed Sybil. “That will be enough for to-night anyhow. There _will_ be things to do, and plenty of them; but we’ll all love to explain them to you one by one. And, in the meanwhile, I’ve come up here because Miss Carey wanted you to know about it to-night. For we like little new girls to have nice dreams!” Sybil laughed outright. “You are to be one of the Daisies--our Daisy mascot. And every one of us--you, Mona, and you, Rene, and Gerry, too, as well as the older Daisies,”--Sybil looked round the listening group--“will feel a special sort of feeling about Betty, and will try to explain to her what Guiding really means, and will try to be extra-specially good Guides just because of having her. And there’s not going to be any more talk about Lone Guides,” said Sybil, getting up; “nor of loneliness of any kind--not at St. Benedick’s. For you don’t belong to the Daisy Patrol only, Betty, you belong to the whole company; and every Guide in it, you know, is a friend to every other Guide, you see.”

Sybil bent down suddenly and kissed Betty on the very spot on her flushed cheek where the big tear had dried itself up a little while before.

“Good-night, little Mascot,” said Sybil. Then she waved her hand to the rest of them and was gone.

Betty fell asleep that night feeling happier than she would half an hour earlier have believed it possible that she could be so soon. The loneliness was gone. Miss Carey’s promise was coming true--she didn’t feel out of things any more in the very least; and, more than that, she was somehow quite, quite sure that she never could feel out of things in the same way again at school. For her wish had come true, and she was to be one of the Daisies!

And the rest of the Guides--but particularly the Daisies--were to show her “what to do” all in good time, so Sybil had said. And to-night she had to do nothing, because Sybil had said so, but just to “love” the idea of it, and to go to sleep and dream nice dreams. That had been Miss Carey’s message to her.

So, as she lay there, “peace came dropping slow.” It seemed easier, with the quiet atmosphere of the old house round her, and with the memory of Miss Carey’s quiet smile, and with the memory of the feeling still of Sybil’s strong restful arm round her, to leave even the home worries resting quietly too in Auntie’s kind, capable hands, without fuss and fret.

“I--do--hope,” Betty found herself thinking drowsily, “that Dad’s cocoa--” But even that fear didn’t last long. She was one of the first in the dormitory to fall asleep that night.

And, as the headmistress had wished, her dreams were glad, each one. And the gladder, and the less lonely perhaps, for the fact that each dream was a jumble of home things and school things, of home people and school people, forming somehow a perfectly natural whole, and fitting in together in the most happily marvellous way!