This brutal man had invited a supper-party for Christmas eve, when he would expect to see mince-pies on the table.  Mrs. Steene had prepared her mince-meat, and had devoted much butter, fine flour, and labour, to the making of a batch of pies in the morning; but they proved to be so very heavy when they came out of the oven, that she could only think with trembling of the moment when her husband should catch sight of them on the supper-table.  He would storm at her, she was certain; and before all the company; and then she should never help crying:  it was so dreadful to think she had come to that, after the bulbul and everything!  Suddenly the thought darted through her mind that this once she might send for a dish of mince-pies from Freely’s:  she knew he had some.  But what was to become of the eighteen heavy mince-pies?  Oh, it was of no use thinking about that; it was very expensive—­indeed, making mince-pies at all was a great expense, when they were not sure to turn out well:  it would be much better to buy them ready-made.  You paid a little more for them, but there was no risk of waste.

Such was the sophistry with which this misguided young woman—­enough.  Mrs. Steene sent for the mince-pies, and, I am grieved to add, garbled her household accounts in order to conceal the fact from her husband.  This was the second step in a downward course, all owing to a young woman’s being out of harmony with her circumstances, yearning after renegades and bulbuls, and being subject to claims from a veterinary surgeon fond of mince-pies.  The third step was to harden herself by telling the fact of the bought mince-pies to her intimate friend Mrs. Mole, who had already guessed it, and who subsequently encouraged herself in buying a mould of jelly, instead of exerting her own skill, by the reflection that “other people” did the same sort of thing.  The infection spread; soon there was a party or clique in Grimworth on the side of “buying at Freely’s”; and many husbands, kept for some time in the dark on this point, innocently swallowed at two mouthfuls a tart on which they were paying a profit of a hundred per cent., and as innocently encouraged a fatal disingenuousness in the partners of their bosoms by praising the pastry.  Others, more keen-sighted, winked at the too frequent presentation on washing-days, and at impromptu suppers, of superior spiced-beef, which flattered their palates more than the cold remnants they had formerly been contented with.  Every housewife who had once “bought at Freely’s” felt a secret joy when she detected a similar perversion in her neighbour’s practice, and soon only two or three old-fashioned mistresses of families held out in the protest against the growing demoralization, saying to their neighbours who came to sup with them, “I can’t offer you Freely’s beef, or Freely’s cheesecakes; everything in our house is home-made; I’m afraid you’ll hardly have any appetite for our plain pastry.”  The doctor, whose