“Can’t we get some light on the subject and a little air as well?” exclaimed Bertha Angel. “It’s stifling in here. Good! Here’s a window,” she added as she pulled a leather thong from a nail and threw back a rude wooden blind, thus uncovering a square opening, and through it came, not only a fresh breeze, but also the slanting rays of the afternoon sun.
“There! Now we can breathe,” said Adele, “and examine our possessions more closely.”
There was a rude bed-couch, a rustic table, and several three-legged stools. These were fashioned out of the trunks of small trees, with the bark still on them.
“Oh, but this will make an adorable Secret Sanctum,” exclaimed Betty Burd.
“Girls,” drawled the romantic Rosamond Wright, “if only this furniture could talk, what tales of sheep-herder’s life it could reveal!”
“The place is so musty and cobwebby,” said the practical Bertha, “we shall have to scrub every inch with warm soap-suds.”
“Oh, Burdie, how could you throw soapy water on my poetical dreams!” moaned Rosamond, who did not even like to hear a scrubbing-brush mentioned, much less entertain the idea of wielding one.
“Tut! Tut! My children!” Adele intervened. “Now all listen to me. You know the spring examinations are due in a few weeks, and we must study, study, study, and cram, cram, cram, so let’s forget that the cabin exists until next Saturday, and then let’s come out here with all the needed utensils, and, with Bertha to superintend the task, we will soon have the place as clean as a whistle.”
“Oh-h!” moaned Rosamond, and then she added mischievously, “I do believe that I’m going to be confined to my bed all day next Saturday with overstudyitis.”
“Don’t worry about that,” laughed Doris Drexel. “You may have overtattingitis, Rosie, but never overstudyitis.”