“They’re quite comfortable,” said Aunt Clara reassuringly, “when they’re filled with clean straw. Our blankets are in that big box and we’d better get our beds made the first thing, so we can roll into them as soon as we get tired.” She bustled around, smoothing out the straw in the bunks with a practised hand and showing the girls how to fold their blankets to the best advantage. “Be sure you have just as much under you as over you,” she advised them again and again. “Camping in winter is a very different proposition from sleeping out in summer.”
Now that the girls had gotten used to the idea of the bunks, they began to think it was a jolly good lark to sleep in them. “If bunks it must be, bunks it is,” said Katherine, in a lugubrious tone that sent them all into gales of laughter, “but I never thought I’d live to see the day!”
“Me for the upper berth,” said Sahwah, standing on a table to accomplish the spreading of her blankets. It was not long before they were all singing:
“Oh, we’re bunking tonight on the side of the wall,
Give us a ladder, please,
We’ve slept in many beds, both hard and soft,
But never in bunks like these!”
“Bunking tonight,
Bunking tonight,
Bunking on the side of the wall!”