On the morning after her adventurous night, as Miss Theodosia lingered
luxuriously over her late breakfast, came bursting in Evangeline Flagg.
A gray-checked something waved from her hand like a flag of truce.
Evangeline always burst into things--houses, and rooms, and excited
little speech.

"Here it is!--that is, if it's yours. Stefana says to ask. 'Tain't ours.
Mercy gracious, no! We don't take our aperns to bed. Stefana never heard
of such a thing. Neither o' us never. In bed--right straight in bed! An'
Stefana hugging it up like everything! She says to ask you if it's yours
because it ain't ours, nor anybody else's, an' it's got to be somebody's
apern, and once I thought I saw a gray 'n' white one hanging through
your window--I mean on a nail, but, mercy gracious, what was it doing in
bed with me an' Stefana!"

Even Evangeline's breath had limitations. She stopped as headlong as she
had begun. She unwound the large, voluminous-skirted apron from her
grasp and extended it.

"Here 'tis, if it's yours," she gasped, spent. She was gazing at it with
a species of awe; it was an "apern" of mystery, not a human apern. "An'
if 't isn't, take it--Stefana said not to dare to bring it back.
We--we're sort of afraid of it, honest. Though, of course, Stefana says
it must 've blew in the window"--the tide of speech was coming in once
more--"an'--an' sort of landed on the bed, an' Stefana kind of grabbed
it in her sleep, thinking it was Elly Precious. But, mercy gracious!"

"Sit down," Miss Theodosia said, smiling. "Doesn't it tire you to talk
as fast as that?"