She was in bed when the rest came up. Perhaps Sybil had spoken to them also; perhaps not; Betty never knew. But at any rate they began to talk to each other, and did not trouble her to join in. “There’s one thing certain and sure,” said Mona, “that there’ll be some reason now for that tracking expedition next Saturday----” Betty fell asleep while the discussion was still going on. CHAPTER XII THE TRACKING EXPEDITION A week had passed. Saturday had come, and the Cup was not yet found. It had been, perhaps, the most sobering week that Betty had ever spent in her life. For, after the meeting with Sybil in the school wood, she had taken the head girl’s words to heart and had tried to go about everyday things as quietly and evenly as she could and in an everyday manner. The other juniors might look at her curiously now and again as though wondering whether Betty had forgotten. But she had not. At almost every moment of the day she remembered that her helter-skelter ways and lack of control had more than probably been the cause of the loss of the Cup. But she was “trying not to fuss,” for she had learned a lesson which she would never forget, and she had formulated, too, in the wood the preceding evening, a principle that she would never lose sight of through all her schooldays to come. She meant to work on and on, “hastening slowly” until some day she saw herself, like Sybil, helping some smaller Guide than herself to higher courage and greater endeavour. She would never forget Sybil’s words to her in the wood: they went to hold a place--though the head girl certainly did not guess it--among the “secret beautiful things” in Betty’s heart which might never be spoken about to any one at all. Not that, after that evening, Betty had come much into contact with the head girl. She had barely met Sybil again that week at all. Only at meal-times in the distance, and during the head girl’s duty hours as prefect, did the two meet. And to all outward appearances Betty’s life went on just as before the loss of the Cup; for though naturally its loss was the chief subject of every conversation, nobody connected her name with the loss, nor suggested by look or word that there might be any such connection. It was not until after some days had passed that she herself dared to broach the subject, which was always uppermost in her mind, to Gerry, her friend. “Gerry, do they think some one saw me cleaning it, and then stole it?” Gerry nodded. “Well, it does seem like that. All the girls have talked it over. It couldn’t very well have gone any other way. Rene suggested a jackdaw, but that’s silly, of course, for the Cup is too heavy. But it could easily have been lifted down from the shelf by any one who climbed in from the wood. And if any one saw you sitting there and cleaning it, and then saw you put it back--” Gerry stopped and looked awkward.