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.

Meanwhile work went on in classrooms and on the playing-fields, in the Guide-rooms and in the gardens, and Midsummer drew nearer every day.

Midsummer weather, too, prevailed, hot and glorious. “Fine weather for the huts,” was the universal morning greeting of certain senior Guides. For one of the interests of the summer term at St. Benedick’s was the yearly erection of huts in the clearing in the wood by any of the older Guides who had obtained permission to work for their Pioneer badges.

“The clearing’s kept specially for it,” as Gerry told Betty. “None of us go there. It takes them weeks and weeks to build them; for they don’t hurry through them, but just work at them when they’re free. Sybil got her Pioneer badge last year; but Eve of the Daisies, and Jean, who’s second in the Foxgloves, and Louise, who’s a Buttercup, are all working for their Pioneers this year. And when the huts are ready there’ll be a ‘hut-warming.’”

“A hut-warming?” repeated Betty.

“Yes, and it’s to be the Saturday before Midsummer Day. That’s decided,” Gerry informed her. “They’re making a camp kitchen, too, and on the night after the ‘warming’ the Pioneers are to be allowed to camp there. Miss Drury’s camping with them. It will be tremendous fun for them, I should think; they’re to cook their own supper and breakfast next day, and act just like Robinson Crusoes. I’m simply longing to be far enough on to work up for my Pioneer badge!”

Betty certainly agreed that it sounded one of the “most thrilly” of the badges, and looked forward with as much zest as the rest for the Pioneer entertainment.

“If the weather--!” was the remark on everybody’s lips during the week preceding the great day.

But there was no “if” about the weather at all when Saturday eventually arrived. The Pioneer hut-makers had spent an energetic week. They had taken advice from Miss Drury and from older girls who had pioneered before them; their camp kitchen’s possibilities had been secretly and privately tested; their huts had received all finishing touches in good time. “The ‘hut-warming’ only lasts for two hours--from four to six,” as Gerry told Betty; “but it’s tremendous fun. They do everything, you see--baking the cakes and all. It generally takes the whole two hours, though, just to eat the meal because it’s all such fun! And then--well, we don’t stay very long because they’ve got to arrange their night camp, and, of course, they’re not awfully experienced in the ways of things.”

The “Pioneers,” however, proved particularly brainy ones that year. They advanced to meet their guests, each from her wigwam door, dressed in Red Indian garments of their own fashioning and design, and proceeded to provide a feast as pioneery as it was peculiar. Instead of tea the guests were served with a beverage which the hosts had prepared from nettles, and pronounced “absolutely non-poisonous and much more pioneery.” Wild strawberries and raspberries in limited quantities figured on the menu, but the pièce de résistance of the feast was the quantity of damper-cakes and bannocks cooked over the embers of the fire. They might be slightly doughy in their interiors and might cause the interior organs of the guests to feel slightly doleful afterwards, but “it was worth it,” as Gerry declared to Betty on their way back, when the “hut-warming” was over and the Guides were left to themselves for the night.

“Rather,” agreed Betty, but in a very abstracted tone.

“What’s wrong? Did you eat too many of them?” inquired Gerry sympathetically. “I thought you suddenly seemed rather--well, glum!”

But Betty’s “glumness” was not the result of damper-cakes, as she proceeded to explain, though the explanation was not apparently easy to make. “I say, Gerry,” she burst out suddenly. “Look!” From her pocket she produced a coloured object of a ribbony texture. “It was in a bush,” blurted out Betty. “Close to the Witch’s Wood fence, you know, where we were all sitting at tea. And I suddenly saw it, and pulled it out.”

“Why,” said Gerry, staring, “one of the Daisies must have lost it. It’s a bit of our patrol ribbon.”

“That’s what I thought,” burst in Betty; “but only just at first. Look here, Gerry; listen. It may be that; but then it mayn’t. You see, it couldn’t have been lost to-day, because it’s been wet with rain and all tousled, and looks as though it had been there for weeks. And the Guides wouldn’t push ribbon into a bush, and----”

“Well?” inquired Gerry, staring. “But even if not, I don’t see----”

“It’s tied in a bow, you see,” went on Betty; “and----”

“Well?” inquired Gerry, staring still.

“And oh, Gerry, don’t you see? Why, our patrol ribbon was tied on to the Cup! In a bow, too; for I untied it and tied it up again that morning when I cleaned it. And it seems to me--” Betty stopped.

“Betty!” Gerry was staring now in good earnest. “You don’t think that the Cup’s hidden somewhere in the school wood, do you? Why, the Guides have searched, you know.”

“I don’t know _what_ to think,” said Betty, looking more miserable than ever. “The fact is, Gerry, I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve done something else silly and helter-skelter without meaning to. An idea has just come to me. I’ve never told any one at all about it, but now--” She stared from the ribbon to Gerry as though wondering what to say next, or whether to leave something still unsaid.

“Whatever do you mean?” asked her friend.