But that autumn the serpent got into Meg's paradise, and tempted her like many a modern Eve, not with apples, but with dress.

Meg didn't like to be pitied and made to feel poor.

It irritated her, but she was ashamed to confess it, and now and then she tried to console herself by buying something pretty, so that Sallie needn't think she had to economize.

She always felt wicked after it, for the pretty things were seldom necessaries, but then they cost so little, it wasn't worth worrying about, so the trifles increased unconsciously, and in the shopping excursions she was no longer a passive looker-on.
But the trifles cost more than one would imagine, and when she cast up her accounts at the end of the month the sum total rather scared her.
John was busy that month and left the bills to her, the next month he was absent, but the third he had a grand quarterly settling up, and Meg never forgot it.

A few days before she had done a dreadful thing, and it weighed upon her conscience.