Jasmine began to dance about, and to say, softly—­

“Oh! this is too delightful!  You darling Mrs. Ellsworthy, you are beginning to approve of our scheme.  Oh, yes; I know you are, although you were too proud to say so.  Now, is it not a little bit wrong of you to be proud after the way you lectured Primrose?  Well, Primrose, shall we go to Mrs. Moore?  I don’t know anything about Kensington, but I suppose it is as good as any other place.  I don’t suppose, either, a pound a week is too much for the three of us.  Shall we go to Mrs. Moore, Primrose?”

Daisy also joined her voice in favor of going to Mrs. Ellsworthy’s friend, and after all, but for that obstinate young person Primrose, the good little lady might have had her way, but Primrose, although she was quite ignorant of fashionable localities or of any London expenses, was very firm, very firm indeed, when she made up her mind.

“It is most kind of you to call and say all this to us,” she answered.  “Oh, yes, we would come if we had not quite decided on an altogether different plan.  That being the case we cannot go to Mrs. Moore—­thank you so much.”

When Jasmine heard her sister speak her face first fell and then brightened up considerably.  “How stupid of me to forget!” she said.  “Oh, yes, we have made a lovely plan, and of course we could not go to anybody whom anybody knew.  Oh, no, of course not.  I cannot think how I came to forget.”

Again Mrs. Ellsworthy tried persuasion and even entreaty, but again she had to own herself vanquished by that most obstinate girl Primrose.  “I really cannot make out why I care for them all,” she said to herself as she drove away.  “I do care for them, poor children!  I would do anything to help them, but I am simply not allowed.  Well, Primrose, no doubt you would be a great trial to me if you were my daughter; I could never bear obstinate characters, and yet to a certain extent I admire you.”

Miss Martineau also made up her mind to forgive these naughty girls, and to give them the benefit of her most sapient counsel.  She too wrote a private letter to a London friend, and arrived at Woodbine Cottage primed with what she considered valuable information.  “Now, my dears, you must go to Shepherd’s Bush—­that is the place, and the only place where you can live within your means.  My friend Constantia Warren has rooms there, and she says—­I have written to her, my loves—­she says if you will let her accompany you in your search she may be able to secure you a clean, respectable bedroom in a fairly good locality.  Constantia is an excellent woman; she is fifty, and plain in her tastes, and has no nonsense about her.  She has promised me, for my sake, to accompany you to church in the evenings, and to see that you wear your veils down when you go out, and that you are back in your bedroom—­you can’t afford a sitting-room, so don’t think of it—­that you are back in your bedroom by five o’clock in the evening, as all girls who have any idea of what is correct and proper are of course in by that hour in London.  Now, my dears, Constantia will be a sort of protectress to you three, and I had better write to her at once.  My dears, it is a relief to me to know you will be near Constantia, for London is a pit—­a pit, and a snare.”