Still, incredible as it may sound, Mrs. Dove considered herself a strictly honest woman.  Perhaps, had the girls only to deal with her they might have struggled on, badly, it is true, but still after a fashion.  But, alas and alas! if Mrs. Dove considered herself honest, Mr. Dove did not pretend to lay claim to this very excellent quality.  Poor Primrose little guessed that that lost five-pound note, which had given her such trouble, and which had almost brought gray hairs to her bright yellow head, had been really taken by Dove, who had come up to the attics when the girls were away, had quietly taken the hinges off Primrose’s trunk at the back, had lifted the lid, and had helped himself neatly and deftly to that solitary note!

When the girls discovered their loss no one had been more indignant than Dove.  He had come up himself to speak to them about it, had examined the trunk in their presence, had told them that he had a cousin of his own in the detective business whom he would put on the scent of the thief, and in the meantime he’d be very pleased, although he was a remarkably poor man, to lend the young ladies ten shillings.

Although they would not think of accepting his loan, the girls thought that Dove had behaved rather kindly on this occasion, and they certainly never in the least suspected it was into his pocket their money had gone.

Without being at all, therefore, to blame, poor Primrose found herself, as Christmas approached, and the days grew short and cold, with very little money in her possession; of course, her quarter’s allowance would soon be due, but some days before it came she had broken into her last sovereign.  Still, she had a resource which her sisters had forgotten, and which, luckily for her, Dove knew nothing at all about—­she still had that letter of Mr. Danesfield’s.  She had never opened it, but she always kept it safely locked up in her trunk.  Not for worlds would she yet break the seal—­no, no, this letter was meant for an hour of great need.  Primrose fondly and proudly hoped that that dark and dreadful hour would never approach and that, having won success, she and her sisters might yet return the letter unopened to its kind donor.  In these dark days before Christmas she kept up her heart, and worked hard at her china-painting, achieving sufficient success and power over her art to enable her to produce some pretty, but, alas! as yet unsaleable articles.  Mr. Jones, her master, assured her, however, that her goods must ere long find a market, and she struggled on bravely.

Perhaps, on the whole, Jasmine was more tried by her present life than her sister.  Jasmine’s was a more highly-strung temperament; she could be more easily depressed and more easily elated—­hers was the kind of nature which pours forth its sweetest and best in sunshine; did the cold blasts of adversity blow too keenly on this rather tropical little flower, then no expansion would come to the beautiful blossoms, and the young life would fail to fulfil its promise.  Jasmine was never meant by nature to be poor; she had been born in Italy, and something of the languor and the love of ease and beauty of her birthplace seemed always to linger round her.  She had talents—­under certain conditions she might even have developed genius, but in no sense of the word was she hardy; where Primrose could endure, and even conquer, Jasmine might die.