“I was the Watchman,” explained Beth patiently. “I had to climb a tree, or something, to get up high enough to be him. Don’t you know what it says, Aunt Rebecca? I saw a picture once like it; the watchman is up in a high thing, like a square steeple, walking back and forth--I couldn’t walk back and forth in a tree, but it was the highest thing I had. Don’t you know, Aunt Rebecca?” “I knew that hymn and many another long before I was your age, Beth; I took the Sabbath school prize for the greatest number of hymns, as well as the greatest number of Bible verses committed to memory, when I was not quite ten,” said Aunt Rebecca with a sort of humble pride. “But I fail to see why you took off your apron, even if you were turning that hymn into a game--and it never occurred to _me_ when _I_ was a little girl to do such a thing as that.” “You couldn’t possibly be a Watchman telling us of the night with a great, long blue gingham apron on, Aunt Rebecca!” said Beth earnestly, though hopelessly. “Then I advise you to play something else,” said Aunt Rebecca. “Now you will have to mend your apron, and most likely it will take so much of your playtime to do it that you won’t play anything to-morrow.” “Aunt Rebecca,” Beth burst out with a vehemence unlike her subdued little self, a vehemence that crimsoned her face to her straight light hair, brushed tightly back and braided beyond all chance of a lock escaping into disorder, “Aunt Rebecca, I hate aprons!” “Do you?” remarked her aunt. “Well, they’re fitting and proper for you to wear, none the less. You’ll find that there are a great many things that are good for you which you may not like.” “I’ve found it out already,” sighed Beth. “I found it out when I was young, but I knew it ’way down in my stomach last summer when I was sick and the doctor left me medicine. But aprons are not good for me; they’re only good for my dresses, and I really don’t see what’s the use of dresses when they’re always covered up in aprons. When they come out of aprons they’re always outgrown, and you give ’em to Emmy Jackson. My Sunday dress is the only one that has the least, wee chance to show. I think aprons are cruel--that is they are if your dress is pretty. Sometimes to get along with it at all, I have to play that my dress is a princess and my apron a wicked fairy smothering her.” “All good little girls wear aprons,” said Aunt Rebecca somewhat at a loss how to answer Beth’s remarks, which were prompted entirely by a sincere desire to let light into her aunt’s mind, and not in the least by the spirit of disobedience, or a desire to rebel against the order of things as they were, including aprons.