have brought you this week's copy of _The Downfall_--the
serial in it is really of the most powerful order. I have shed a
deluge of tears over it. The lowest person of rank in the pages is a
marquess; but the story mostly deals in ducal families. It was a
terrible blow to come down to the baker from the duke's ancestral
halls--you read it, Miss Jasmine; you'll be very much overcome."

CHAPTER XXIV.

DOVE'S JOKE.

Primrose had always been considered a very good manager. Her talents
for contriving, for buying, and, in short, for making a shilling do
the utmost that a shilling was capable of, had been observable from
her earliest days. In the last years of her mother's life Primrose had
been entrusted with the family purse, and the shopkeepers at Rosebury
had known better than not to offer this bright-looking young lady the
best that they had at the lowest price. Primrose, therefore, when she
came to London, had felt pretty confident that the talents which she
knew she possessed would stand her in good stead. She still hoped to
find the cheapest shops and to get the best for her money. She laid
her plans with accuracy and common sense, she divided the little sum
which the three had to live on into weekly instalments--she resolved
not to go beyond these. But, alas! Primrose had never reckoned on a
certain grave difficulty which here confronted her. Hitherto her
dealings had been with honest tradespeople; now it was her
misfortune, and her sisters', to get into a house where honesty was
far from practised. In a thousand little ways Mrs. Dove could pilfer
from the girls--she would not for the world have acknowledged to
herself that she would really steal; oh, no--but she did not consider
it stealing to use their coal instead of her own--of course, by
mistake; she by no means considered it stealing when she baked a
little joint for them in her oven on Sunday to boil it first, and in
this way secure a very good soup for various hungry young Doves; she
did not consider it stealing to so confuse the baker's account that
some of the loaves consumed by her children were paid for by Primrose;
nor did she consider it stealing to add water to the milk with which
she supplied the Mainwarings; above all things, and on this point she
was most emphatic, she thought it the reverse of stealing to borrow.
Primrose had not been a fortnight in her house before she began to ask
first for the loan of an odd sixpence, then for half-a-