Skelton's Guide to Domestic Poisons: 1 (Skelton's Guides) by David Stafford

Author:David Stafford [Stafford, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sort2
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2020-09-16T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

‘Some girls like to do Scouting but Scouting for girls is not the same as for boys,’ Agnes Baden-Powell, Founder and Vice-President of the Girl Guides had written. ‘The chief difference in the training of the two courses of instruction is that Scouting for boys makes for MANLINESS , but the training for Guides makes for WOMANLINESS , and enables girls the better to help in the battle for life.’

Rose’s father had had reservations about the Girl Guides. For a start, there was the title of the handbook: How Girls Can Help to Build Up the Empire . He had never read Bukharin’s Imperialism and the World Economy or Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, but he knew that every right-thinking person should be suspicious of the very word ‘empire’ with its connotations of jingoism, unless, as somebody in the Daily Herald had once argued, it could become a vehicle for bringing the blessing of socialism to people of many lands.

Rose thought he was being silly. Guiding embraced all sorts of tastes, beliefs, nationalities and races. She had worked hard to get her Clerk’s badge, with its strict handwriting requirements, and her Pathfinder badge, but had no interest in Boatswaining or Floristry. Other girls she knew had no interest in Pathfinding but were accomplished Florists or Boatswains. The movement could accommodate all tastes, temperaments and beliefs. Some Guides were Church of England, others, Methodists. Overseas, there were even Hindu Guides.

And some girls were keen on empire, others on socialism. In Russia, she assumed, they probably had communist guides and in Italy, fascists. Round the campfire all such distinctions were quickly forgotten. A message that had been hammered home in meeting after meeting was that Boy Scouts and Girl Guides of all ages should be ‘Little Friends of All The World’ prepared for daily acts of kindness, understanding and heroism.

Comrades all! Then let us forward

Strong in body, heart, and mind;

Guides are we, our true endeavour

Friends in all the world to find

‘Girls need not wait for war to break out to show what heroines they can be. We have many everyday heroines whose example might be followed with advantage,’ Miss Baden Powell had said.

Rose could think of nothing better than to be an everyday heroine whose example might be followed with advantage. The letter that Mr Skelton had sent to her father, saying he was taking the case and commending her own ‘efficiency and enthusiasm for the task in hand’ had made her blush and her father weep with pride. This was her chance then to prove her everyday heroism.

The task was not to slay a dragon or cross a mountain range. Her task was to get to the District Land Registry and seek out documents relating to the purchase of a parcel of land, approximately forty acres in area, just outside Collingford in a place called Steppes or Steps Green and known locally as ‘Sid Dutton’s forty’.

Shakespeare or Jesus or Kipling once said, ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.

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