Page 495 - LITTLE WOMEN

Little Women

as if it were a thing of no consequence, and driven away,
feeling as if she had stolen something, and the police were
after her.
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-

494 of 861