“I thought all your money was taken; where did you get enough to pay this bill?”
“Oh! that is a secret,” she replied, with a pleased little flutter of importance. “It’s no manner of consequence how I came by it. I’ve paid the bill—that’s the essential thing—and I’ve got out of that dreadful quicksand. Oh, Tib, I have been so unhappy, and Cynthia has been so mean! I did not think it possible that any one could be so horrid.”
“Tell me all about it, dear,” I said, caressing the curly blond head which nestled on my knee.
“I believe I will. I feel like telling somebody, and Winnie is so queer lately—she freezes me. She has disapproved of me and scolded me ever since she found out about Cynthia’s dress, and I can’t bear to be disapproved of. It isn’t one bit nice. Adelaide is perfectly splendid; she likes me and pets me, but perhaps she wouldn’t if she knew everything; but you are just my dear old Tib. You would always like me, wouldn’t you, even if I were real wicked?”
“Yes indeed, Milly,” I replied; “and so would Winnie; you don’t half realize her love for you.”
“Then she has a very queer way of showing it. She makes me feel as if I had committed some dreadful sin, and she was urging me to confess. She is just about as pleasant a companion as that Florentine monk—what’s his name? who kept nagging Lorenzo de Medici—even when the poor man was just as busy as he could be a-dying.”
“Savonarola acted as he thought was kindest and best for his poor guilty friend. Sometimes the surgeon who probes our wound is the truest friend—But you are going to tell me about your trouble—I’ve noticed how red your little nose has been of late.”
“It was partly Celeste’s fault, too,” Milly said. “Cynthia’s and Celeste’s and mine. Of course the fault was mostly mine. You see it all started with the minuet—with which Professor Fafalata closed his dancing class just before the Christmas holidays. He wished us to be costumed in the Florentine style of the early part of the sixteenth century. I was talking it over with Celeste, and she said I ought to have the front of my petticoat covered with some jewelled net which she had just imported from Paris. It was very expensive, but very beautiful, and showy in the evening. The net was made of gold thread set with imitation amethysts and rubies, an arabesque design, copied from some mediæval embroidery, and just the thing for me, since I was to represent a young princess of the house of Medici. I thought that I would write mother, who was in Florida then, and ask her to lend me one of her party dresses, and that it would be just the thing to put over it; and while I was admiring it and before I had really ordered it, or realized what she was doing, Celeste had cut me off a yard of it, and had charged it to my account—fifteen dollars. I brought it here, you remember, only to find that Madame had interested Professor Waite in the minuet, and that he had promised to lend the girls some beautiful costumes of the period which he had brought back from Paris. There was that lovely heliotrope velvet edged with ermine for Adelaide, and a faded pink brocade sprigged with primroses for me.
“So of course there wasn’t the slightest need for my golden net. I carried it to Celeste to see if she would take it back. She said that she would like to oblige me, but as it was cut she couldn’t quite do that, but she would try to dispose of it for me. And she did sell it a few days later for ten dollars. I thought that was better than to lose the entire sum. She handed me the money, saying that it would put her to some trouble to change her accounts, and I had better let the bill go in just as she had made it out, and I could hand mother the ten dollars and explain matters. I really intended to do so, but I was nearly bankrupt that month. My pocket money just seemed to walk away. I had invited Adelaide to see the play of the ‘Harvard Hasty Pudding,’ and of course I had to have Miss Noakes chaperone us, and I hadn’t money enough left to buy the tickets.”
“Why didn’t you tell her so?” I asked.