OVERVIEW: Hilary Leads the Way
Apr. 10th, 2026 09:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllI see I haven’t posted about any Irene Mossop books here before, although I have some of her books, so I’ve lost out an easy way of checking if I was right to be surprised that ‘Hilary Leads The Way’ was about Guides. It’s one of those school stories that starts at the end of one term and ends at the end of another. At the start of the book, Hilary AKA Larry is waiting to find out whether she’s come top of the Lower School, because it would mean winning a one-year scholarship and that would help her family who have had a tough year. She has, and along with that, gained her remove to the Middle School, but her two closest friend Audrey and Kitten have not.
Over the holidays, she meets the daughter of a friend of her father’s, Marigold, who is about to join the school and should by age be in the middle school too. Marigold also a friend of Ray Enderbury’s, a fourth form girl who was none too popular with the third, because she liked games and Guides and made it all too clear that she thought the third were slack. Goldy*, another keen Guide, hopes that she, Ray and Larry will be in the same form. They are.
For a while, Larry is torn between her old friends and ways and new friends and ways of thinking about things. She keeps changing her mind on rags that Audrey, in particular, pushes, but which no longer seem such a good idea to Larry. When she witnesses the heroics that Ray pulls off, in part because of her Guide training, she decides to become one herself, and learns that popularity gained by drifting is not worth very much at all, but that real loyalty matters far more. I liked it more than ‘Girls of Deepdene’, but not as much as ‘Tenth at Trinder’s’ for what that’s worth.
*Nicknames are very popular in this book. Obviously, Kitten was not christened as such.
Over the holidays, she meets the daughter of a friend of her father’s, Marigold, who is about to join the school and should by age be in the middle school too. Marigold also a friend of Ray Enderbury’s, a fourth form girl who was none too popular with the third, because she liked games and Guides and made it all too clear that she thought the third were slack. Goldy*, another keen Guide, hopes that she, Ray and Larry will be in the same form. They are.
For a while, Larry is torn between her old friends and ways and new friends and ways of thinking about things. She keeps changing her mind on rags that Audrey, in particular, pushes, but which no longer seem such a good idea to Larry. When she witnesses the heroics that Ray pulls off, in part because of her Guide training, she decides to become one herself, and learns that popularity gained by drifting is not worth very much at all, but that real loyalty matters far more. I liked it more than ‘Girls of Deepdene’, but not as much as ‘Tenth at Trinder’s’ for what that’s worth.
*Nicknames are very popular in this book. Obviously, Kitten was not christened as such.
