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, ma