Father had a newspaper and a box of matches in his pocket, so, with the help of the dry heather, they soon had a glowing red blaze, and swung the kettle on a hook, fastened to the end of a long chain, which hung, in true Welsh fashion, from a great beam fixed across the chimney.
'Now, while the water boils,' said Mr. Vaughan, 'we must go and pull heather for our beds, before the dew begins to fall upon it. Come along, my two subalterns, this is camp life, and you must learn to bivouac like true soldiers.'
'"The heath this night must be my bed,
The bracken's curtain for my head,"'
sang Peggy, who had been studying the 'Lady of the Lake' at school, and quoted it on all occasions. 'But we ought not to have a hut at all. We should just wrap ourselves in our plaids, and lie under the "silent stars."'
'I prefer a roof over my head myself,' said Father dryly. 'But if you are so anxious to taste the romantic you may sleep in the cold outside. I'm afraid I haven't a plaidie to offer you.'
'I'm sure a heather bed will be stunning!' declared Bobby. 'I don't think I shall ever want sheets and nightshirts, and horrid things of that sort, again. I'd like to be a hunter when I grow up, and always live in tents, and caves, and jolly places, like the boys in books.'
'It's just like the Swiss Family Robinson, only ever so much nicer,' said Peggy. 'I wish we lived up here, and then we shouldn't need to go to school, and darn stockings, and do all kinds of things we hate!'
They pulled great armfuls of the delicious purple heather, and laid them on the floor close to the fire, for Father said it was chilly at nights after the sun had gone down, and they would need all the warmth they could get. The kettle was boiling noisily by this time, so the children hastened to set out the cups and plates. There was no table-cloth, but that did not matter in the least, and the absence of teaspoons was regarded as rather an advantage than otherwise. It was so quaint to sit right inside the chimney corner, and smell the delicious blue peat smoke that was curling its way to the turf roof overhead, and to look out through the open doorway at the silver lake, sending gentle ripples over the little sandy beach, and always the purple waste of heather beyond, with the mountains rising up, tier after tier, into the dim distance.
There never were such appetites. Peggy poured out, with a grand air, as if she were officiating at some Court ceremony. Aunt Helen's hard-boiled eggs and bread-and-butter disappeared like magic, and the little teapot was filled again and again, till there was no more water left in the kettle.
'Bobby, you simply must stop!' said Father. 'Please to remember our supplies have to last us for breakfast and lunch to-morrow. If we eat up everything so fast, we shall be obliged to go hungry before we get home again. Now I am going out to look after the sheep, and I shall leave you to clear away and wash up. If I bring you camping out up here, you must be my orderlies, and do the work. I generally put the cups into the pool outside.'