Round the room whirled Sally again, laughing as she went. But, alas! for Sally and her fun!
Somehow the pink-and-white apron caught on the iron latch of the stairway door, there was a sharp sound of tearing, and frightened Sally looked round to see a long strip of the apron hanging limp and loose from the rest of the hem.
She had torn Miss Neppy’s apron! What should she do?
Sally didn’t stop to think. If she had, she would have known that the only thing for her to do would be to go straight to Miss Neppy in the garden and tell her just what had happened.
But Sally didn’t do this.
She took off the apron in a flash, she rolled it into a ball, and then she tucked it away in the lowest drawer of Miss Neppy’s dresser, hidden under a pile of napkins and the big kitchen roller towel.
She was just in time, for downstairs came Alice, smiling and laughing and ready now for fun.
‘I have been making new faces upstairs, in front of Mother’s mirror,’ said she. ‘Look, can you do this?’
But Sally wouldn’t try the new faces, nor even laugh nor smile.
‘I feel sick,’ said Sally. ‘My throat hurts. I want to go home.’