Gerry tried to explain why. “We’ve tried to be the best patrol all this year, and we _are_ likely to keep it,” she said, “unless something dreadful happens. We all know that, and the other patrols know it too. We’re top in badges, you see; and we got top marks at the display last term. And those things count. Miss Carey gives the decision, of course, at the end, though. And even if we _had_ got best marks, and best badges, and best reports, yet we shouldn’t deserve it--at least I’m sure Miss Carey would say so, and it would be true--if----” “If what?” said Betty for the third time. “Well, I’m trying to say it. If just because we were near it we got slack about little things like slugs,” finished up Gerry thankfully. “There, that’s what I mean. They’re big things, really, even though they’re little; because they’d mean that we _were_ slack. So----” Betty nodded. She did see. “Let’s go back and garden, then, instead of tracking,” suggested she resignedly. “No, I don’t believe Sybil would tell us to. Not a bit. Of course you want to know about spooring. It’s only that it’s sort of fussy and not Benedicky to race off to something else when you’ve got started on a job.” Gerry was rather red as she spoke. “Here’s the sandy patch,” she added with relief, “behind these bushes. A bird’s been walking on it already. See?--the mark of his claws, I mean. Well, we’ll practise our own now, and then you will see the difference.” The occupation began. But all the time Gerry was coaching her in the earliest rudiments of spooring, Betty’s face wore an exceptionally solemn look. Her friend had been more “Guidy” than herself, as she expressed it. She was still “helter-skelter,” as Sybil had called her on the first night, and though she was beginning to grasp the true meaning underlying the school motto, and to come under the influence of the quiet, steady atmosphere of St. Benedick’s, yet, in her well-meaning anxiety to be up and doing, Betty seemed sometimes to frustrate her own efforts after all. It had been like that at home sometimes. She had not yet forgotten the results of a certain day’s zeal, when she had raced busily into her father’s patients’ waiting-room to pacify the screaming baby of a poor woman patient, and had thus brought the germ of scarlet fever upon herself and even upon the luckless twins. Dad had spoken no word of blame; but Ann, the general servant, who had had so many extra duties thrust upon her by the results of Betty’s act of energy, had had her say. Also, as Betty knew, it was “the scarlet fever” which had caused Dad’s appeal to Auntie, who was governessing in India, to come home and help them. There had been other well-meant actions, too, which had come to naught.