"You're going to scold me for my extravagance now, Nancy. I—I got this to-day. I was hiding it, because I didn't—I mean I was afraid you might read me a lecture." She attempted an air of playful penitence, but it was rather a failure. It was a very expensive fur, long and fluffy, and beautifully lined with frilled chiffon.
"But—Alma," remonstrated Nancy, weakly, "how did you get it? It must have cost at least a hundred dollars. Why——" She broke off quite dazed and frightened at the thought of such a sum, and stared at her sister as if she thought that Alma had taken leave of her senses.
"Well, you see—don't worry, Nancy," stammered Alma, evidently finding the greatest difficulty in explaining. "You see—it was this way. Milly—oh, Nancy,"—she stopped and looked at her sister beseechingly,—"Milly wanted me to get it. And she offered to lend me the money—she begged me to let her lend it to me, and I can pay her back whenever I please; she said she didn't care whether I paid her back at all. And I felt so shabby in that old suit of mine, and I hated to look badly when Frank was going to be there—he knows ever so much about girls' clothes, and I did look positively poor beside Mildred. I knew Mother wouldn't mind—in fact, I knew that it would hurt her pride dreadfully if I didn't look respectable with those sort of people—and the fur made everything else look just right. Oh, Nancy, if you only knew how it hurts me to be with girls who have everything, who look so much nicer than I do just because they have prettier clothes. I know it was wrong of me, but I couldn't resist it! I just simply couldn't."
Nancy bit her lip. It seemed as if she were always being thrust into a position where she must needs be forever preaching to Alma. It made her feel old, and uncomfortably burdened. With Alma she always felt somewhat as a staid and wise old duenna must feel with a pretty and charmingly unpractical and mischievous charge. For a moment she was on the point of shrugging her shoulders and determining to let Alma go ahead as she pleased. She had no desire to blame Alma; she understood too well the force of the temptations that surrounded a girl like Alma in such an environment as Miss Leland's school; and she was touched by Alma's, "If you knew how it hurts me!" She had foreseen just that when she had urged her mother not to send them to Miss Leland's. She herself had felt that very same sharp flick of wounded feminine pride when she compared her own small possessions with those of the other girls and realized that in spite of the neatness of her clothes they must often appear plain to the point of poorness in comparison with Mildred's or Kay's. Somehow with Charlotte, in spite of Charlotte's pretty things, she had not been so conscious of the contrast.
"I—I wish you hadn't tried to hide it from me, Alma," she said gently. "Are you afraid of me? Am I always scolding you?"
"Nancy! Of course not," cried Alma, in distress. "I didn't mean to hide it—that was horribly cowardly—I knew that it was weak of me to get it, and that I had no right to borrow the money from Mildred; and you have a perfect right to blame me awfully."
"But, dear, however are we going to manage to pay her back? How much was it?"
Alma looked uncomfortable.
"It really was a bargain, Nancy. A—a hundred and ten, marked down from a hundred and forty. It'll last me forever."
"A hundred and ten!" Nancy gasped, and then tried to compose her features so as not to scare Alma with her own breathless dismay.