“Makes no difference whether you have good news or not, my dear,” she said to Eleanor. “You’ve done us a sight of good already. Waked me up an’ made me see that it’s wrong to sit down and cry when it’s a time to be up an’ doin’.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t have stayed in the dumps very long,” said Eleanor, cheerfully. “Perhaps we got you started a little bit sooner, but I can see that you’re not the sort to stay discouraged very long.”
Then, while a few of the girls, with the aid of the Pratt children, washed dishes and cleared up after the meal, Eleanor took aside Margery and some of the stronger girls, like Bessie and Dolly, to show them what she wanted done while she was away.
“There’s plenty of wood around here,” she said. “A whole lot of the boards are only a little bit scorched, and some of them really aren’t burned at all. Now, if you take those and lay them against the side of that steep bank there, near where the big barn stood, you’ll have one side of a shelter. Then take saplings, and put them up about seven feet away from your boards.”
She held a sapling in place, to show what she meant.
“Cut a fork in the top of each sapling, and dig holes so that they will stand up. Then lay strips of wood from the saplings to the tops of your boards, and cover the space you’ve got that way with branches. If you go about half a mile beyond here, you’ll be able to get all the branches you want from spots where the fire hasn’t burned at all.”
“Why, they’ll be like the Indian lean-tos I’ve read about, won’t they?” exclaimed Margery.
“They’re on that principle,” said Eleanor. “Probably we could get along very well without laying any boards at all against that bank, but it might be damp, and there’s no use in taking chances. And—”
“Oh, Miss Eleanor,” Dolly interrupted, “excuse me, but if it rained or there were water above, wouldn’t it leak right down and run through from the top of the bank?”
“That’s a good idea, Dolly. I’ll tell you how to avoid that. Dig a trench at the top of the bank, just as long as the shelter you have underneath, and the water will all be caught in that. And if you give the trench a little slope, one way or the other, or both ways from the centre, not much, just an inch in ten feet—the water will all be carried off.”