blinds to the windows--we have got our own white
muslin curtains; Hannah washed them for us, and they are as white as
snow. Oh! the place we want might be very humble, and very
inexpensive. Do tell us if you know of any rooms that would suit us."

While Jasmine was speaking Mrs. Dredge kept on gazing at her, her
round face growing long, and her full blue eyes becoming extended to
their largest size.

"My dear child," she said, "wherever were you brought up? Don't you
know that the kind of lodgings you want are just the hardest of all to
get? Yes, my dear, I have experience in London apartments, and about
them, and with regard to them, there is one invariable and unbroken
rule--cheapness and dirt--expense and cleanliness. Bless you! you
innocent child, you had better give up the notion of the cheap
lodgings, and stay on contented and happy at the Mansion."

Jasmine smiled faintly--said "Thank you, Mrs. Dredge," in a pretty
gentle voice, and a moment or two later, with a deeper carnation than
usual in her cheeks, she quietly left the room.

"Primrose," she said upstairs to her sister, "we mustn't ask advice
about our lodgings; we must take the map with us, and go and look for
them all by ourselves. Mrs. Dredge says that clean lodgings are very,
very dear, and it is only dirty lodgings that are cheap."

When Jasmine ran into the room Primrose was standing by the
dressing-table, and in her usual methodical fashion was putting tidily
away her own things and her sisters'; now she faced Jasmine with a
little smile on her face.

"There is just one thing," she said, "that we can do--we can with our
own hands make the dirty lodgings clean. Never mind, Jasmine darling,
we won't ask anybody's advice; we'll go out and look round us
to-morrow."

Early the next morning the three sisters set out--Daisy having first
locked the Pink in their room. It may be remarked in parenthesis that
the Pink did not like her new quarters, and had already made herself
notorious by breaking two saucers and a cup, by upsetting a basin of
milk, and by disappearing with the leg of a chicken. In consequence,
she was in great disgrace, and Mrs. Flint had been heard to speak of
her as "that odious cat!" The Pink, however, was safe for the present,
and the girls set out on their little pilgrimage of discovery.

"London," said Primrose, in a somewhat sententious voice, has "points
of the compass, like any other place. It has its north and its south,