Chapter IX: Betty Keeps a Secret

“I say,” remarked the inhabitants of Dormitory Three in chorus.

Not that they were assembled in the dormitory, but “hasten slowly” time was just over on the afternoon of the day following Betty’s adventure in the wood.

“Hasten slowly” time occurred every day, and occupied the hour immediately following each midday meal. The name had originated after the utterance of an apt remark by one of the middle school girls who had discovered that the hour’s rest enforced by rule at St. Benedick’s was not waste of valuable time after all, but tended rather, in the end, to help towards a fuller use of energy. To new pupils hailing from other and perhaps more “go-ahead” schools it was something of a surprise to find that from two o’clock to three every one of the middle and junior girls was required to endure or enjoy an hour’s _dolce far niente_--stretched out in summer time on the lawns, and in winter time on rugs in the Oak Hall.

Of all the strange ways of school Betty had found this one, at first, the hardest to bear. Lying perfectly still on a sunny lawn during the first two afternoons her thoughts had travelled homewards at an alarming pace. She had longed to be up and “doing something.” And to know that sixty minutes of this home-sick time was ahead of her daily until the end of term seemed more than she could bear. On the third day, however, to her vast surprise, she had fallen asleep in the middle of a torturing thought as to whether Auntie had remembered to get those shoes of Jan’s both soled and heeled, and had wakened in amazement to find Gerry at her side while the church clock struck three. But after that experience the spell had been broken somehow; Betty had grown to look forward to the “hasten slowly” hour as one of the most restful in her restful days.

It was a good time to repeat the Guide law and the promises, sleepily and more sleepily until they almost changed to dreams. It was a good time to think thoughts that, otherwise, the business of the day might have ruled out altogether. Betty thought of the fairy piper music sometimes in this hour; and remembered what Sybil had said, and wondered. On this particular afternoon she had been thinking curiously, quietly, and almost lovingly of her strange secret adventure in the witch’s cottage.

And she had decided--had quite decided--that the adventure there was one of the things Sybil had meant. “Some things are loveliest when they are kept secret,” the head girl had said. “Things that sometimes happen when one is alone. It takes the bloom off them to talk of them.” Betty remembered every word, though she had not understood at the time what the words could mean. Now she was beginning to understand, though; so she told herself. For if she were to tell any one, the telling, somehow, would spoil her adventure-memory. That secret of the witch’s cottage--which had seemed so desolate outside, but which, inside, had been beautiful, cared for by some strange, mysterious magic--was her own. Perhaps the piper of dreams was connected with it. Perhaps----

Betty was still drowsily and happily “perhapsing” on the subject under the shade of one of the great old trees in the grounds, when the prefect whose duty that afternoon it was to preside over the juniors’ quiet hour gave the signal for them to rise.

“I say, Betty, tell us. We’ve not had a single chance to ask you about yesterday afternoon till now. You never said a word about it in the dormitory; but the other girls know. There’s plenty of time while we get our letter-writing things. You can even tell us while we write them. Miss Drury says we can write letters under the trees this afternoon because it’s too hot indoors.”

“I’m not going to tell _anything_ while I write letters,” said Betty with startled conviction. Sunday afternoons were packed full, as she rightly considered, since there were five anxious, loving folk at home to be reassured concerning her health and happiness, and regaled with tit-bits of weekly information. “And besides,” she continued hurriedly, “there’s nothing to tell.”

“There is.” Mona and Rene were convinced on that point. “About the boy whose face you were patching up when Drina and Maud came along. They said it showed you’d make a good Guide. And however came you to be in the road at all?” finished up Mona.

“Anybody in the world, not only Guides,” said Betty with rising colour, “would help a boy with a cut cheek, I should trust and hope--especially when he was frightened, and seeing that he was sort of queer, you know. When Drina and Maud came along, though, it was _they_ who helped him more than me.”

“They know First Aid, being senior Guides, of course,” put in Mona informatively. “And Drina anyway, being head of the Foxgloves, has heaps of badges. She would know simply _anything_! It happens that she knew who the boy was. It was just Robby--old Granny Beaver’s boy. I know him too, quite well; they call him a ‘natural.’ We often get hot water from that cottage in the holidays when we go for picnics at home.”

“He was dreadfully frightened, whoever he was,” said Betty again; “but I think he was brave too.”

“Brave _and_ frightened?” said Rene. “Well, anyway Drina told Eve--for I heard her--that when they came up you were mending his cheek; and he was crying.”

“It wasn’t that kind of bravery I meant.” But Betty stuck to her point. “He did cry, I know. He was crying, too, when the boys were teasing him. But--well, I’d got into Witch’s Wood by mistake, you see,” she continued hurriedly. “I’ve explained to Drina, and she understands how. And that Robby-boy saw me climbing out. The other boys ran off because they were frightened of me--thinking I was the witch, I suppose,” went on Betty, “and never looked back. But he--well, he might have run, too, I suppose; but he didn’t. He was _brave_, like I said. He even forgot his cuts and things and stopped crying, and kept on telling me how spooky and frightening and all that the wood is. And he was shaking with fright himself all the time. I could see it. And _yet_ he went on.”

By the emphasis of her utterance her convictions carried weight. The others nodded.

“Drina said that,” agreed Mona. “She said he kept begging you not to go back and get spooked by the witch. Of course he’s sort of simple; and I expect his granny frightened him about it when he was little. She’s rather hateful. Perhaps he felt grateful to you for taking his part and wanted to pay you back. Didn’t he follow you home?”

“Yes, poor darling,” said Betty in her most motherly tone--“and simply wouldn’t go, and wouldn’t go. And even when he _did_ go he kept saying that he’d do something for me some day. That’s all,” finished up Betty, as, cumbered with a writing pad and two sharp pencils, she turned lawnwards again. “It wasn’t an adventure, except, of course----”

She stopped.

Except the part of the afternoon when she had found the witch’s cottage. But she had decided to say nothing about that. Not to Mona and Rene; not even to Gerry; no, and not even in the weekly letter home. It was to be her own secret “with all the lovely bloom left on,” as Sybil had advised.

Her experience in the wood, however, even though a part of it was known only to herself, came into active consideration at the next meeting of the senior Guides.

“It just shows how useful it is for the juniors to understand tracking,” remarked Sybil. “A less sensible girl than Betty Carlyle might have got right into the heart of the wood. And perhaps, if the others had been telling her silly tales, she would have been more frightened than she was. There’s the cottage there, you see, I believe, still. That cottage which is supposed to contain a ghost.”

“A cottage, Sybil?” Some of the seniors were not even aware of its existence.

“Oh yes; quite a village story. And Rene, since she lives in the district, knows about it. No Guide believes in ghosts, naturally; but Betty is only such a raw recruit, and there is a cottage there. It’s out of bounds, of course, and lies right in the middle of the wood, I believe; and, our directions being to keep on this side of the broken paling, it’s out of bounds to us. But Betty knew nothing about that apparently, and went straight on.”

“She said nothing about any cottage, however,” put in Drina. “When Maud and I found her patching up the boy she was at her most energetic--apparently comforting him on account of his own fears of the wood, and assuring him that she was not a witch herself! He had been telling her his fears; that’s what Maud and I thought.”

“But all the same,” Sybil spoke up, “I am going to make some extra practice time for all the junior Daisies. Betty says that she tried to follow ‘sign,’--evidently acting on Eve’s instructions--but that she could not find any! Well, they shall have a tracking practice next week.”

“You mean to keep the Cup next year, then, Sybil!”

“Let the best patrol win, of course; but I mean ours to be the best if dogged will do it,” said the head of the school.

The junior Daisies, therefore, on the following Friday afternoon were thrilled and enthralled at the appearance of a special notice on the notice-board of their patrol. There would be, it appeared, an expedition on the following Saturday week, captained by the head. All Daisies were expected to attend, and--before the practice--they were requested to “make themselves as ready as possible” for the afternoon’s lesson, which would, it appeared, include exercise in spooring and tracking.

“But what can _I_ do?” inquired Betty rather helplessly in the dormitory that night. For her recent efforts to extricate herself from the wood by means of applying the principles laid down by Eve had met with scant success. And she was terribly anxious not to disgrace the patrol to which she was attached.

“Sybil won’t expect you to know _anything_. _We’re_ going to read up,” informed Mona and Rene.

But to the Mascot the blue Guide book was as yet forbidden ground. Betty would in feverish eagerness, as Sybil probably guessed, have read and re-read the blue book through, and in trying to work out every principle at one and the same time have failed miserably. “Nothing was to be gained by snatching,” as Miss Carey had said on the first night. Betty’s knowledge must come by slow degrees.

“I tell you what,” said Gerry, noticing her friend’s unhappy face, “we’ll both practise together. There’s a week before the expedition, and you’ll learn some things anyway by then. There’s a sandy place in the grounds here where we’ve worked at making footprints, and we’ll start on that. Different sized ones, and standing still and running ones, you know.”

Gerry dimpled in a friendly way.

This sounded delicious to the Mascot; in spite of the rather superior looks of Mona and Rene, Betty’s eyes danced at the thought. If she had known how very real and unexpectedly thrilling the tracking expedition at the end of the week would turn out to be, it is likely that she would not have longed for it quite as whole-heartedly and delightedly as she did.