CHAPTER XTHE PINK-AND-WHITE APRON
Alicehad a toothache. At least she had had a toothache, but now the pain was gone, leaving her with a swollen cheek twice as plump as it ought to be.
Alice quite enjoyed her too plump face. When she looked in the mirror she couldn’t help smiling, her face was so droll. And her smile was so funny, so twisted, so ‘fat,’ that Alice just couldn’t help smiling again.
As for Sally, she laughed outright at Alice’s face when she came over to play that afternoon.
‘This is the way you look,’ said she, plumping out both cheeks like two red balloons.
In spite of all the laughing and the fun, Alice didn’t feel yet like playing lively games.
Her mother had gone to the city, shopping, and Alice, after a little nap, had been sittingquietly downstairs with Miss Neppy until Sally came over to play.
But when Sally did come, Alice didn’t feel like romping in the garden, nor going down to the beach, nor even swinging in Sally’s big red swing. So she and Sally settled down, with a picture book between them, in the kitchen where Miss Neppy was ironing aprons.
Sally was always interested in Miss Neppy’s aprons, and it was because she wore so many of them. Yes, all at one time, Miss Neppy would wear as many as four or five aprons, and Sally knew quite well, by now, what each apron meant.
First of all, just over her dress, Miss Neppy wore a small, fine, white apron, trimmed with lace she had made herself, and often with pockets ornamented by tiny bows of pale lavender ribbon. This was her very best apron, quite nice enough to wear when the minister came to call.
Over the small white apron Miss Neppy wouldtie a large, full, white one, with three fine tucks above the hem. This was the apron in which Miss Neppy would knit or sew or even sit and talk with her friends.
Above this white apron came a stout one, perhaps of white with little blue dots or rings, or perhaps with gay bunches of pink or blue posies. In this apron Miss Neppy did her dusting, her bed-making, her shelling of peas and stringing of beans.
While, last of all, came a dark blue-and-white gingham apron that covered little Miss Neppy all round about and was meant for cooking and washing, for digging in the garden and for scrubbing the floors.
As I say, Sally had grown to know the proper use of each apron, and she knew, too, that Miss Neppy would not feel completely dressed unless she had the right apron on at the right time. Sally had often watched her slip out of her gingham and her dotted aprons when a neighbor knocked at her door, and once she had seenMiss Neppy untie three aprons in the twinkling of an eye and, neat and trim, shake hands with the minister who had come to call.
This afternoon Miss Neppy was ironing aprons, and for this work she wore a white apron covered closely with fine dark blue dots.
Thump, thump went the iron, with an occasional hiss! when Miss Neppy tested it with a Wet forefinger to see whether it were hot enough or no. The pile of ironed aprons grew higher and higher, and Sally and Alice looked up every now and then from the picture book to watch it grow.
‘You must have more than a hundred aprons, Miss Neppy,’ said Sally, watching Miss Neppy unroll and shake out a dampened apron covered over with bright pink flowers.
‘That is the prettiest apron of all,’ thought Sally to herself.
‘Oh, no, Sally,’ replied Miss Neppy, looking at the little girl over her spectacles, ‘I have nothing like a hundred aprons. Why, I shouldthink 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 thepink-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.’
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.’
So Sally went home. She couldn’t run fast enough, she wanted so badly to whisper inMother’s ear the dreadful thing she had done.
But Mother had company, two strange ladies, who stayed until Sally thought they never meant to go.
And, somehow, when at last she and Mother were alone, Sally didn’t feel like telling. When Father came home, Sally didn’t feel like telling him, either.
She couldn’t eat her dinner. Her throat hurt, she said. She couldn’t swallow. She couldn’t speak.
She sat alone on the doorstep with Paulina in her arms, and was really glad when Mother called her to come in to bed.
Once in bed, Sally lay and tossed.
Why hadn’t she told Miss Neppy? Miss Neppy wouldn’t scold. Sally was not afraid of that. Did Miss Neppy know yet about the apron? Had she found it, tucked away in the lowest dresser drawer?
Perhaps Miss Neppy would come straight over the moment the apron was found. Shemight be coming over that very night. Perhaps she would say that Mother must buy her a new pink-and-white apron. Did such aprons cost very much? Sally didn’t know.
Perhaps, too, when Mrs. Burr heard of it, she would not allow Alice to play with Sally any more. And would Miss Neppy ever love Sally after this? If she thought it was wicked to have one hundred aprons, what would she think of a little girl who tore one and didn’t tell!
Oh, if Sally had only told Mother and Father! If only they knew!
Oh, oh, oh!
Sally was crying and choking, when suddenly she slipped out of bed.
Downstairs she started, tumbling over her long nightgown, slipping and catching the banisters at every step.
In astonishment Father looked up from his paper and Mother from her sewing to see Sally in the doorway, the tears rolling down her cheeks.
‘I tore Miss Neppy’s apron,’ sobbed Sally.‘I tore it and I hid it in the dresser drawer. I played with her apron, and I tore it and I didn’t tell.’
And Sally fairly danced up and down, she felt so miserable and unhappy about it all.
But after a moment or two, with Sally safe on Father’s lap, and Mother kneeling on the floor, holding both hands in hers, Sally was able to stop crying and to tell all that had happened that afternoon.
When she had quite finished, Father said, ‘Suppose we go straight over to Miss Neppy’s and tell her now.’
Sally nodded. It was just what she wanted to do.
So Mother ran for Sally’s slippers and long blue coat, and Father carried her over the way to where Miss Neppy sat alone by her front window, rocking and knitting and humming a little song.
Miss Neppy, when she heard Sally’s story, was very much surprised.
‘Land sakes!’ exclaimed Miss Neppy, ‘I never missed that apron when I put the others away. And I left it on the top of the pile, too, because, when I ironed it, I saw that the hem was ripped. Go get the apron, Sally, and let us look at it, do.’
Out of the lowest dresser drawer Sally pulled the apron, all crumpled into a ball. And, would you believe it, when Sally and Miss Neppy and Father looked at it, the apron was not torn at all, the hem was only ripped. It seemed too good to be true.
‘Mother will mend it,’ said Sally joyfully. ‘She told me to bring it home with me. Mother will mend it, Miss Neppy.’
And Sally put both arms about Miss Neppy’s neck and gave her a tight, tight hug.
In the morning, bright and early, Sally ran over to Miss Neppy’s again, with the apron nicely mended and freshly ironed in her arms.
‘Next time I will tell the very first thing,Miss Neppy,’ said Sally, smiling up into her friend’s face.
Miss Neppy smiled back.
‘I would,’ said she. ‘Never keep a secret like that again. And, Sally, there is a peach for you on the window-sill. Don’t spill it on your dress.’