WHEN the trying day finally came to an end Sara had the audacity to ask, "Do I need my bath. I've been so good?" Alice replied with a prompt asperity that was a great relief to her feelings:
"Indeed you do! You need one very much indeed!"
"But I have been so good," drawled Sara. "I've been a sweet child, haven't I, Father?" This sort of remark would annoy even the most deluded father.
"Yes, you have been so good," he replied with less spontaneity than he had shown, "and let's hear no more about it."
"About not bathing," Alice rapped out smartly.
"Aha!" cheered Robert. "You thought you'd get out of it."
"Don't nag your sister," his father advised him.
"Nag," thought Alice, "as if that honest child could nag!"
They were at the supper table when Sara came down from her bath. She wore no kimono over her nightgown; she had no slippers on her feet. She pranced in with the air of one who is naked and unashamed. Water, it seemed, had not washed her sins away, though it had melted off the outer veneer of virtue. It seemed that righteousness, after all, did not pay.
"Where are your slippers?" Robert inquired sternly.
"Upstairs," answered Sara, "and my kimono is up there, too," she went on, "and do you know why I left them? I left them upstairs because I wanted to! That's why I left them!"
