Little women. Part two by Alcott, Louisa May

When she got home, she tried to assuage the pangs of remorse by spreading forth the lovely silk, but it looked less silvery now, didn’t become her, after all, and the words `fifty dollars’ seemed stamped like a pattern down each breadth. She put it away, but it haunted her, not delightfully as a new dress should, but dreadfully like the ghost of a folly that was not easily laid. When John got out his books that night, Meg’s heart sank, and for the first time in her married life, she was afraid of her husband. The kind, brown eyes looked as if they could be stern, and though he was unusually merry, she fancied he had found her out, but didn’t mean to let her know it. The house bills were all paid, the books all in order. John had praised her, and was undoing the old pocketbook which they called the `bank’, when Meg, knowing that it was quite empty, stopped his hand, saying nervously . . .

“You haven’t seen my private expense book yet.”

John never asked to see it, but she always insisted on his doing so, and used to enjoy his masculine amazement at the queer things women wanted, and made him guess what piping was, demand fiercely the meaning of a hug-me-tight, or wonder how a little thing composed of three rosebuds, a bit of velvet, and a pair of strings, could possibly be a bonnet, and cost six dollars. That night he looked as if he would like the fun of quizzing her figures and pretending to be horrified at her extravagance, as he often did, being particularly proud of his prudent wife.

The little book was brought slowly out and laid down before him. Meg got behind his chair under pretense of smoothing the wrinkles out of his tired forehead, and standing there, she said, with her panic increasing with every word . ..

“John, dear, I’m ashamed to show you my book, for I’ve really been dreadfully extravagant lately. I go about so much I must have things, you know, and Sallie advised my getting it, so I did, and my New Year’s money will partly pay for it, but I was sorry after I had done it, for I knew you’d think it wrong in me.”

John laughed, and drew her round beside him, saying good-humoredly, “Don’t go and hide. I won’t beat you if you have got a pair of killing boots. I’m rather proud of my wife’s feet, and don’t mind if she does pay eight or nine dollars for her boots, if they are good ones.”

That had been one of her last `trifles’, and John’s eye had fallen on it as he spoke. “Oh, what will he say when he comes to that awful fifty dollars!” thought Meg, with a shiver.

“It’s worse than boots, it’s a silk dress,” she said, with the calmness of desperation, for she wanted the worst over.

“Well, dear, what is the `dem’d total’, as Mr. Mantalini says?”

That didn’t sound like John, and she knew he was looking up at her with the straightforward look that she had always been ready to meet and answer with one as frank till now. She turned the page and her head at the same time, pointing to the sum which would have been bad enough without the fifty, but which was appalling to her with that added. For a minute the room was very still, then John said slowly — mdash; but she could feel it cost him an effort to express no displeasure — mdash; . . .

“Well, I don’t know that fifty is much for a dress, with all the furbelows and notions you have to have to finish it off these days.”

“It isn’t made or trimmed,” sighed Meg, faintly, for a sudden recollection of the cost still to be incurred quite overwhelmed her.

“Twenty-five yards of silk seems a good deal to cover one small woman, but I’ve no doubt my wife will look as fine as Ned Moffat’s when she gets it on,” said John dryly.

“I know you are angry, John, but I can’t help it. I don’t mean to waste your money, and I didn’t think those little things would count up so. I can’t resist them when I see Sallie buying all she wants, and pitying me because I don’t. I try to be contented, but it is hard, and I’m tired of being poor.”