Directions: Read the rewritten excerpt from "Muriel's Bright Idea." Then answer the questions.
My friend, Muriel, is the youngest daughter in a large family of busy people. They are in moderate circumstances, and the original breadwinner has been long gone. So, in order to enjoy many of the comforts and a few of the luxuries of life the young people have to be wage- earners. I am not sure that they would enjoy life any better than they do now if such were not the case, though there are doubtless times when they would like to be less busy. Still, even this condition has its compensations.
"Other people do not know how lovely vacations are,"was the way Esther expressed it as she sat one day on the side porch, hands folded lightly in her lap, and an air of delicious idleness about her entire person. It was her week of absolute leisure which she had earned by a season of hard work. She is a public-school teacher belonging to a section and grade where they work their teachers fourteen hours of the twenty-four.
Alice is a music-teacher and goes all day from house to house in town and from school to school with her music-roll in hand. Ben, a young brother, is studying medicine in a doctor's office also in town and serving the doctor between times to pay for his opportunities. There are two others, an older brother who just started in business for himself and a sister in a training- school for nurses.
So it was that this large family scattered each morning to their duties in the city ten miles away and gathered at night like chickens to the home nest which was mothered by the dearest little woman who gave much of her time and strength to the preparation of favorite dishes with which to greet the wage-earners as they gathered at night around the home table. It is a very happy family, but it was not about any of them that I set out to tell you. In truth, it was Muriel's apron that I wanted to talk about, but it seemed necessary to describe the family in order to secure full appreciation of the apron.
Muriel, I should tell you, is still a high-school girl, hoping to be graduated next year, though at times a little anxious lest she may not pass and with ambitions to enter college as soon as possible.
The entire family has ambitions for Muriel, and I believe that she will get to college in another year. About her apron, I saw it first one morning when I crossed the street to my neighbor's side door that opens directly into the large living room and met Muriel in the doorway, as pretty a picture as a fair-haired, bright-eyed girl of seventeen can make. She was in what she called her uniform, a short dress made of dark print, cut lower in the neck than a street dress. It had elbow sleeves and a bit of white braid stitched on their bands and around the square neck set off the little costume charmingly.
Her apron was of strong dark-green denim wide enough to cover her dress completely. It had a bib waist held in place by shoulder straps, and the garment fastened behind with a single button making it adjustable in a second. Its distinctive feature was a row of pockets-or rather several rows of them-extending across the front breadth. They were of varying sizes, and all bulged out as if well filled.
"What in the world?"I began, and stared at the pockets. Muriel's merry laugh rang out.
"Haven't you seen my pockets before?"she asked. "They astonish you, of course. Everybody laughs at them, but I am proud of them. They are my own invention. You see, we are such a busy family all day long and so tired when we get home at night, that we have a bad habit of dropping things just where they happen to land and leaving them. By the end of the week this big living room is a sight to behold. It used to take half my morning to pick up the thousand and one things that did not belong here and carry them to their places. You do not know how many journeys I had to make because I was always overlooking something. So, I invented this apron with a pocket in it for every member of the family, and it works like a charm.
Note
Only spelling mistakes, if any, in the above passage have been corrected. No other corrections, including grammatical, have been made so that the originality of the passage is maintained.