“Oh, I do think this is fine; I do, I do!” cried Nora, thinking that their green, heathery bedroom was the nicest in the world. She lay down on the heather. “It is as soft as can be!” she said; “and oh! there is something making a most delicious smell. What is it?”
“It is a patch of wild thyme," said Jack. “Look, there is a bit in the middle of the heather. You will smell it when you go to sleep, Nora!”
“All the same, Jack, the heather won’t feel quiet so soft when we have lain on it a few hours,” said Mike. “We’d better get some armfuls of bracken too, hadn’t we?”
“Yes,” said Jack. “Come on up the hill. There is plenty of bracken there, and heaps of heather too. We will pick the bracken and put it in the sun to dry. The heather doesn’t need drying. Pick plenty, for the softer we lie the better we’ll sleep! Heyho for a starry night and a heathery bed!”
The four children gathered armfuls of bracken and put it out in the sun to wither and dry. The heather they carried back to their green bedroom under the oak tree. They spread it thickly there. It looked most deliciously soft! The thick gorse bushes kept off the breeze, and the oaks above waved their branches and whispered. What fun it all was!
“Well, there are our bedrooms ready,” said Jack. “Now, we’d better find a place to put our stores in. We won’t be too far from the water, because it’s so useful for washing ourselves and our dishes in.”
The children were hungry again. They got out the rest of the cakes, and finished up the bread, eating some peas with it, which they shelled as they ate.
“Are we going to have any supper?” asked Mike.
“We might have a cup of cocoa each and a piece of my cake,” said Jack. “We must be careful not to eat everything at once that we’ve brought, or we’ll go short! I’ll do some fishing to-morrow.”
“Shall we begin to build the house to-morrow?” asked Mike, who was longing to see how Jack meant to make their house.