Dear Diary,

A most embarrassing, humiliating, and dreadful thing has happened! Last Monday during break I asked William if I could borrow fifty cents and, in his usual sweet way, he obliged. I know it was wrong of me to do, and that fifty cents is quite a bit of money to borrow, but I needed it to help buy a new summer blouse -- just one! -- and I promised that I would pay him back . But when I wrote to Father asking him to add this sum to my allowance for the week so that I could make good on my promise, he refused! He scolded me and told me I was not "practicing a wise economy." Oh, how I despise those words! Father always does this to me; he is convinced that my clothes ought to last me a lifetime and seems to live under the delusion that there is no such thing as fashion! And what's more, how on earth am I to pay Will back? He will forever despise me for being dishonest and will likely think me a cheating thief. Father claims that I will thank him when I am a grown woman, that I know little yet of the responsibilities of adulthood, and that respectability is dependent on financial prudence. But I am still a girl! Why must I feel guilty for wanting new things? I wonder if Father were to see for himself how brightly my cheeks shall burn when I tell Will that I do not yet have his recompense...would that make any difference? I know that it would not. And still, I cannot hate my father. Part of me knows that he is, as he always has been, right. It frustrates me so!

Defeatedly,
Angelina