“I have some trimming upstairs. Just be quiet for five minutes, while I finish my list, and then I’ll bring down my scrap-box, and we’ll see what we can find.”
That scrap-box was in constant request during the next weeks. It was filled with the dainty oddments which a woman of means and taste collects in the course of years; trimmings and laces, and scraps of fine brocades; belts and buckles, and buttons of silver and paste; glittering ends of tinsel, ends of silk and ribbons that were really too pretty to throw away, and cunning little motifs which had the magic quality of disguising deficiencies and making both ends meet. Claire gave with a lavish hand, and Cecil’s gratitude was pathetic in its intensity. More and more as the weeks passed on did she become obsessed with the craze for decking herself in fine garments; new gloves, shoes, and veils were purchased to supplement the home-made garments, and one memorable night there arrived a large dress-box containing an evening dress and cloak.
“I have been out so little these last years. I have no clothes to wear,” Cecil said in explanation. “It’s not fair to—er—people, when they take you about, to look as if you had come out of the Ark... And these ready-made things are so cheap!”
She spoke with an air of excusing herself, and with a flush of embarrassment on her cheeks, and Claire hastened to sympathise and agree. She wondered if the embarrassment arose from the fact that for the last two weeks Cecil had not paid her share of the joint expenses! The omission had happened naturally enough, for on each occasion when the landlady appeared with the bill, Cecil had been absent on one of her now frequent excursions, when it had seemed the simplest thing to settle in full, and await repayment next day.
Repayment, however, had not come. Half a dozen times over Cecil had exclaimed, “Oh, dear, there’s that money. I must remember!” but apparently she never had remembered at a moment when her purse was at hand.
Claire was honestly indifferent. The hundred pounds which she had deposited in a bank was considerably diminished, since it had been drawn on for all her needs, but the term’s salary would be paid in a short time, and the thought of that, added to the remainder, gave her a pleasant feeling of ease. It was only when for the third Saturday Cecil hurried off with an air of fluster and embarrassment, that an unpleasant suspicion arose. The weekly bill was again due, and Cecil had not forgotten, she was only elaborately pretending to forget! Claire was not angry, she was perfectly willing to play the part of banker until the end of the term, but she hated the thought that Cecil was acting a part, and deliberately trying to deceive. What if she had been extravagant in her expenditure on clothes and had run herself short for necessary expenses, there was nothing criminal in that! Foolish it might be, but a fellow-girl would understand that, after being staid and sensible for a long, long time, it was a blessed relief to the feminine mind to have a little spell of recklessness for a change. Cecil had only to say, “I’ve run myself horribly short. Can you pay up till I get my screw?” and the whole matter would have been settled in a trice. But to pretend to forget was so mean!
The next morning after breakfast the vexed question of the Christmas holidays came up for discussion for the twentieth time. Cecil had previously stated that she always spent the time with her mother, but it now appeared that to a certain extent she had changed her plans.
“I shall have to go down over Christmas Day and the New Year, I suppose. Old people make such a fuss over those stupid anniversaries, but I shall come up again on the second. I prefer to be in town. We have to pay for the rooms in any case, so we may as well use them.”
Claire’s face lengthened.
“Pay for them! Even if we go away?”