I do not know what Nancy would have thought of such a method of washing up, but it answered splendidly all the same, for the greasy water drained away into the grass, and the fresh breeze dried the plates without any need of a towel, and Peggy even managed to clean out the frying-pan with the help of some fern-leaves and a wisp of grass, an achievement of which she felt quite proud.
'We can't make our beds,' she said, 'because there's nothing to make; but we'll pile the heather up with the rest of the peat in the chimney corner, and it will do to light the fire with next time. I mean to ask Father to bring us, now, whenever he comes up.'
They managed to construct a broom from some of the longest pieces of heather, and swept the crumbs neatly out at the front-door; they hung up the frying-pan, the kettle, and the bellows in their accustomed places, and stacked the cups and plates in the old box which served as a cupboard.
'Doesn't it look nice?' said Peggy, gazing round with much satisfaction on their handiwork. 'If only we could stay up here a good long time we'd bring lots of things from home, and paint pictures for the walls, and put them in cork frames, and I really believe, if I tried, I could make up one of those hearthrugs out of little scraps of cloth all pinched up and sewn on, like Nancy made last winter for her sister's wedding present.'
'Oh, bother the cottage!' said Bobby, who, boy-like, soon tired of domestic duties. 'Let's go out and look for whinberries; there ought to be heaps of them round there by the lake.'
Peggy was more than willing, and relinquishing her schemes of household improvement to hunt up the milk-can as a handy receptacle, followed him out into the sunshine, to search among the heather for the little low-growing, red-leaved shrubs with their crop of small purple berries.
But the blackbirds and the ring-ousels had been before them, so it took a long time to fill the can, especially as a good deal of the fruit found its way into the children's mouths, leaving them with such purple lips and stained fingers that they resembled the babes in the wood.
'I say, Peggy,' cried Bobby suddenly, stooping down to examine more closely the grassy bank where he was sitting, 'there's a whole swarm of bees keeps coming in and out of this hole.'
Peggy came hurrying up in great excitement, tripping as usual over her dangling bootlace.
'It's a wild bees' nest; I expect the bank is full of honey. Oh, wouldn't it be fun to dig it out! I'm sure we could do it first-rate!'