"Can I go with only one stocking on?" Oh-Pshaw persisted plaintively. "I haven't another pair here in the tent."
"I can't find my middy," Jean Lawrence was lamenting, paying no heed to Oh-Pshaw's troubles in regard to hosiery.
Tiny Armstrong, reaching down behind her bed for some missing article of her costume, gave the bed such a shove that it went flying out of the tent carrying the rustic railing with it, and they heard it go bumping down the hillside.
"Strike one!" called Tiny ruefully. "That's what comes of being so strong. I'll knock the tent down next."
"Will somebody please tell me where my middy is?" Jean cried tragically.
"I can't find it anywhere."
"Will someone tell me where the other leg of my bloomers is?" exclaimed Katherine. "I've shoved both feet through the same leg three times, now. There goes the breakfast bugle!"
"Oh, where is my other stocking?"
"Where is my middy?"
"Who's gone south with my shoes?"
The threefold wail floated down on the breeze as footsteps began to run down the Alley in the direction of the bungalow. A few minutes later the occupants of Bedlam slid as unobtrusively as possible into the lighted bungalow; Oh-Pshaw with her bloomers down around her ankles in a Turkish effect, to hide the fact that she had on only one stocking; Jean with her sweater buttoned tightly around her, Katherine with her red silk tie bound around one knee to gather up the fullness of her bloomer leg, for the elastic band had burst from the strain of accommodating two feet at once; and Tiny had one white sneaker and one red Pullman slipper on. Glancing around at the rest they saw many others in the same plight—middies on hindside before, odd shoes and stockings, sweaters instead of middies, and various other parodies on the regular camp uniform—and immediately they ceased to feel conspicuous. Taking their places around the table the campers proceeded to sing one of the morning greetings: