‘Oh, no, Sally,’ replied Miss Neppy, looking at the little girl over her spectacles, ‘I have nothing like a hundred aprons. Why, I should think it was wicked to have as many as that.’
Presently Miss Neppy finished her ironing.
‘I’m going into the garden to pick beans for dinner, children,’ said she.
So she tied about her waist a dark blue-and-white checked apron that covered her all round, and with her basket on her arm went into the garden that sloped down the steep hill toward the sea.
‘I think I will go upstairs and bring down Jack Tar,’ said Alice. ‘I haven’t seen him since last night when I went to bed with toothache.’
So Sally was left alone.
She walked round the kitchen that she knew almost as well as her own, and looked out of the window at Miss Neppy’s head and back bending over the green rows of beans. Then she eyed the high pile of aprons left on the table to air. On top of the pile lay the pink-and-white apron, ‘the prettiest one of all.’
The next thing Sally knew she had taken the pink-and-white apron from the pile, had unfolded it, and was shaking it out.
Of course she knew she shouldn’t touch Miss Neppy’s apron. She knew it as well as you or I. But in spite of this, she first held the apron up before her, and then, finding that it dragged upon the floor, she flung it round her shoulders like a cape, and swept about the room with the cape flying out behind.
What fun it was! How fine she felt! When Alice came downstairs she, too, must borrow an apron and they would play ‘lady come to see.’