“Dear Mrs. Dredge, it is a secret, but we are really not going to stay here long, and we want, if possible, to find very cheap lodgings.”

“Very cheap, love; and you think I can guide you?  Well, well, I have had, as you wisely say, my experiences.  About what figure would you be inclined to go to, my dear?”

“I don’t know,” answered Jasmine.  “Our house in the country was twelve pounds a year—­I don’t think we ought to pay as much as that, for of course we should not want a whole house, only two rooms.  A nice, large, airy bedroom, and a cheerful sitting-room.  We should not mind how plain the furniture was, if only it was very, very clean.  You know the kind of place, with snow-white boards—­the sort of boards you could eat off—­and little plain beds with dimity frills round them, and very white muslin 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.