Little Sally Waters

by Ethel Calvert Phillips

Sally pressed her hands together hard and smiled all over her round little face.

‘This is the very nicest time I have had since—since Christmas,’ said Sally with a gay little hop. ‘I think you are just as good as Santa Claus, Aunt Bee.’

Then Sally had a thought.

‘Won’t Tippy have any of the party?’ asked Sally.

‘Tippy? He shall have a bone,’ was Aunt Bee’s answer. ‘That is the kind of a party he will like, you know.’

So Sally went into the garden to tell Tippy all about the party. And as Tippy was still chasing butterflies, Sally in turn chased Tippy round and round, in and out the garden beds, until at last she and Tippy could run no more and sat themselves down on the doorstep to cool off and rest.

Now the street upon which both Sally and Aunt Bee lived was a narrow street, a narrow, crooked little street that ran downhill to the sea with many a twist and turn. And across the way from Aunt Bee and Sally there stood a little house on the slope of the hill in which lived their friend Miss Neppy Lee.

Miss Neppy was a little old lady who lived all alone, with not even a cat or a dog to keep her company. But early every summer Miss Neppy put a sign in her front window, a card that read ‘Rooms,’ and every summer Miss Neppy had a paying guest or two who stayed until the flowers had gone and the wind grew cold and autumn and winter were close at hand.

Sally was always interested in Miss Neppy’s ‘Roomers,’ as they were called. Very often the ‘Roomer’ would be a tall young man or a pretty young lady who, every day, with paint box and easel, would go down to the rocks at the end of Sally’s street to paint pictures of the sea. They usually nodded and waved their hands at the little girl over the way who smiled at them from her doorstep in such friendly fashion. ‘Roomers’ seemed pleasant people to Sally, and she wished with all her heart that Mother and Aunt Bee would put signs in their front windows and take ‘Roomers,’ too.

Now, as Sally sat in Aunt Bee’s doorway, she glanced over at Miss Neppy’s window, where last night the sign ‘Rooms’ had gleamed in all its black and white. And in a twinkling, Sally saw that the sign ‘Rooms’ was gone. Even more, as she looked, she saw Miss Neppy’s front door open and a little girl slip out and seat herself on the doorstone.