"She said at last that if I would get Celeste to wait for her pay she would take the dress and pay her later. I thought only of paying for the material at Arnold's, for I had expected to have the money by that time, and had asked them to make a separate bill out, and not put it on my book that goes every month to papa. So we arranged it. Cynthia gave me her twenty dollars and I settled for the cloth, and Celeste made the dress for her, and furnished the trimmings. But how she did run them up! She had a band of real sable around the hem of the skirt and trimmed the jacket with it too; and made her that cute little toque with heads and tails on it, and when the bill came in it was sixty dollars. Cynthia was frightened. 'I never can pay it in the world,' she said. 'I think your dressmaker is frightfully extortionate; and I had no idea it would be so much.' I felt sorry for her and I felt, too, that I was to blame for getting her into the predicament; so I said we would divide the expense, and she should only pay half. But she grumbled at that, and said that I had inveigled her into the trouble, and that she had a dressmaker on 125th Street who would have made the suit for ten dollars. When I reminded her of the fur, she said she did not believe it was real sable, and she didn't want it any way.
"I offered to take it to Gunther's and see if I could get something for it, if she would rip it off, but she said she would do no such thing; the dress would be a fright without it. It was all a miserable mess, and I was so unhappy. It would have been some consolation if Cynthia had been grateful, but she blamed me for everything, and I think that, considering all I have done for her, she treated me very shabbily when she said that Adelaide was the only lady in the Amen Corner, and she did not care to speak to any of us again."
"That was like Cynthia, and I am sure that the loss of her friendship can only be a benefit to you. But, Milly, you must bravely shoulder the greater part of the blame yourself. Your first wrong step was in getting the golden net without permission, then in letting Celeste pay you for it and yet having it charged to your father. Then, again, in getting the cloth for Adelaide's habit without consulting your father you deliberately did wrong; and in bargaining with Cynthia, instead of going straight to your father and confessing your fault, you waded still more deeply in----"