"And never expect to again! I've found out what solid comfort I have missed in wearing freak shoes instead of sensible ones!" commented Nita.
All these things pleased Miss Miller immensely, for she saw permanent good in the summer's work. But one of the unlooked-for results of the camp that summer was revealed just before the Band prepared to pack up. Mrs. Sherwood came up one day and said, with tears in her eyes, how she would miss the happy family on the Bluff.
"Why," said she, turning to the Guide, "even Bill and me tried your new-fangled idee of sleepin' on'y we pulled our bed out on the porch. And say, Miss Miller, it really air fine, ain't it!"
"Do you mean to say that you have been sleeping out of doors, and never won a coup!" cried Zan, laughing.
"I don't know what your coo means, but I know we both like the nice sweet air of summer nights!" said Mrs. Sherwood.
"Do you still sleep on feathers?" asked the Guide.
"Naow, that's anuther queer thing! The first nights the featherbed was all right! Then Bill began squirmin' and sayin' it was too heatin'. Then I felt the same way, so we took it off one night and slept a heap better on the mattrass. Sense that, we've ben usin' th' plain mattrass!"
"Stick to it, and never go back to feather-beds, Mrs. Sherwood, and you'll feel a hundred percent better this winter," advised the Guide.
"Bill said somethin' 'bout your sayin' I ought to git rid of my stiff joints, an' d'ye know, girls! Sense I have hed to climb up an' down this hill so much every day, I reely am feelin' limber again! I'm shore I tuck off at least twenty pounds extra fat durin' this summer!" exclaimed the simple woman, gladly.
"My! That is some reducer! It ought to be advised to city folks who spend money on massage and Turkish baths!" laughed Hilda, while some of the girls thought to themselves that Mrs. Sherwood could lose another fifty pounds and not miss it.