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The Bosun. For all her understandable boredom in South Africa, Elizabeth has inherited from her parents the instinctive ability to, do the right thing. At a Girl Guide (Girl Scout) review in dark Basutoland, it was she who spotted a bus full of Guides kept well apart from the rest. Despite the anguished cries of officials, she promptly went over to talk to them. They were the Girl Guide troop from a leper colony. Next day everyone in South Africa knew what the Princess had done.
In Buckingham Palace, just as she might have in some U.S. Middletown, the heiress to the throne had her own troop of Girl Guides, the 7th Westminster Company, organized by children of Palace staffers. The Queen gave the girls a company flag, and in time Elizabeth worked her way up to be patrol leader—"a distinction," her official biographers carefully point out, "achieved only through merit." At Windsor Elizabeth was the Bosun of the Kingfisher Patrol of the Sea Rangers (seagoing Guides), and woe betide any Ranger who came aboard the flagship (a whaleboat presented by King George) like a landlubber. "Here," she once told her chatterbox sister Margaret, "I am not your sister, and I'll permit no slackness." Margaret, too, can be critical. "Lilibet," she once said, "that's the fourteenth chocolate biscuit you've eaten. You're as bad as Mother—you don't know when to stop."
From the first, Elizabeth's father and mother (Papa and Mummie) were determined to keep their daughter's life as free from the shadow of the Crown as possible. But in Britain, as in most of the Empire, Princess Lilibet was the private darling of every household. Her every gurgled word, new tooth, prank or bright saying was reported and syndicated to the farthest outposts. Did Lilibet have a new camera? The press promptly drooled: "She has already taken some quite creditable photos since she mastered the art of getting her subjects into focus."
Many an echo of these lavish reports came back to Lilibet, and her sense of importance was in no way diminished by a kindly, doting old Sovereign whom she called "Grandpapa England." "They're cheering for you, you know," George V explained to her one day as he held her in his arms on the Palace balcony. Lilibet smiled radiantly. Later she was caught testing her royal prerogative by making a playmate bow low in homage.
But if her potential subjects and fond grandfather were determined to make Lilibet aware of her importance, there were others equally determined to make her aware of her responsibilities. Statuesque Queen Mary, still the greatest influence in Elizabeth's life, was never one to tolerate arrogant nonsense as she shepherded her small relative through London's museums and theaters. Once when Lilibet tugged at her impatiently because there were crowds outside "waiting to see me," Granny Queen whisked the proud Princess home via the back door. One day when furious Lilibet was demanding a favor of her governess with the words "This is Royalty speaking," her mother reminded her gently: "Royalty has never been an excuse for bad manners."