“If there are any little bugs living in this bark,” Peggy said, “we bid them come forth.”
“They’ll be drowned little bugs before many minutes,” Rosamond added, as she threw a pail of fresh water from the brook over the table, to rinse off the soap-suds. This they also did to the couch-bed and the stools, and then the rustic furniture was left in the warm noon sunshine to dry and sweeten.
Meanwhile, the inside of the cabin was being thoroughly scoured, and many a startled spider darted out into the meadow, never to return.
At last the four maidens appeared in the doorway, and Adele threw herself down on the warm ground as she exclaimed, “Well, if scrub-ladies get as weary as this in their bones, I’m glad that I’m planning to take up a different profession.”
“Oh, you girls had the hardest part of it,” Gertrude declared. “Scrubbing the furniture was really like play.”
“Well,” said Adele, “we seven have banded together with the firm resolve of looking on the sunny side of things, and the sunny side of this scrubbing is—”
“That it’s done,” Rosamond interrupted.
“I’ll agree that is one sunny side to it,” laughed Adele, “and the other is, that we’ll enjoy our Secret Sanctum so much more, now that it is sweet and clean—”
“And bugless,” put in Betty Burd.
Adele, heeding not the interruption, continued, “And you know a thing that’s worth having is worth working for.”