No consideration of servants' dress would be complete without an allusion to the cap and apron of the house- or parlour-maid. To begin with, we see in these a survival of the special dresses which were once adopted by particular trades. The fact that the cap is white points to a connection with the early head-dresses of women which we see now perpetuated by the nuns, and which are relics of the time when it was customary to have linen caps and hoods. Perhaps there is some connection between the cap of the servant and the custom which condemns women to wear their hats in church and makes them feel desirous of keeping them on their heads at all kinds of public entertainments. On this question, however, we shall have a word to say later. Sometimes servants' caps have strings which, like those that are customarily found on bonnets and on mitres (see page 54), are the survival of the ends of a head fillet. The latest development in this direction is a scarf which is allowed to hang down from the backs of ladies' hats, and which may be of so substantial a nature that it looks very much like a fringed towel. The apron can claim a long history, and just as the plush and powder of the footman were once worn by his master, so we may easily discover that the apron was not always the special attribute of those who work or serve. Towards the end of the seventeenth century aprons were considered an almost essential part of a fine lady's costume. A little later on, Queen Anne made and wore them herself, and very gaily ornamented garments they were. In the case of the lower classes, aprons were--as they still often are--provided with bibs. The old name for them was barme-cloth, and under this title Chaucer refers to the apron of Carpenter's wife as being as white as the morning milk. Unless the article of dress which we are discussing was of considerable age, we should hardly have the proverbial expression which defines a man who is always at home as being tied to his wife's apron-strings. Another name for an apron with a bib which was pinned to the front of the dress was "pinner," which gives us the word pinafore, which refers now to a kind of overall rather than to an apron. In the costumes of the barge-women and milk-women, where we get a slight survival of characteristic country dress, we have seen that in both cases the apron is always adopted as part of the outfit. (See Plate VIII.) [Illustration: A BARGE GIRL WITH THE CHARACTERISTIC BONNET AND APRON. SHE IS NOT WEARING HER SMALL PLAID SHAWL. (_From a photograph by Wakefield, Brentford._) _PLATE VIII._] The uniform of the hospital nurse partakes somewhat of that of the nun, but at the same time the apron is often one of its most important features. We mention this uniform here because it has become customary of recent years for the nurses who look after the children of well-to-do families to assume the bonnet and veil and severely cut collars and cuffs of the hospital nurse.