Chapter 24 The Palace Beautiful: A Story for Girls by L. T. Meade
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-crown, for a shilling here, and two shillings there. When she returned the half-crown it was generally done in this fashion—
"Oh, if you please, miss, I want to settle my little account. Oh, dear, dear! I was certain I had half-a-crown in my purse. Well, to be sure, I forgot that Dove took it with him when he went out to his work this morning. Please, Miss Mainwaring, will you accept one and sixpence on account, and we'll settle the rest in an hour or two. There, miss, that's quite comfortable."
Yes, the arrangement was certainly quite comfortable for Mrs. Dove, who could score out the half-crown debt from her slate, and quite stare when Primrose ventured to ask her for the odd shilling still owing.
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.
The little sister, who was too young to acutely feel any change which did not part her from Primrose and Jasmine, was, perhaps, the only one of the three whose spirits were on a par with what they were in the old Rosebury days; but although Daisy's little mind remained tranquil, and she did not trouble herself about ways and means, nor greatly fret over the fact that the skies were leaden, and the attic room foggy, still Daisy also suffered in her rather delicate little body. She caught cold in the London fogs, and the cold brought on a cough, and the cough produced loss of appetite. The two elder sisters, however, were scarcely as yet uneasy about her, and it was only Miss Egerton who saw the likeness to little Constance growing and growing in Daisy's sweet face. Thus Christmas drew near, and the girls had not yet found their mission in life; they were by no means crushed, however, nor was Primrose tired of repeating what she firmly believed, that with the New Year some of the sunshine of London life would be theirs.
The quarterly allowance from Mr. Danesfield always arrived on the first of the month. On the first of December this year the welcome letter, with its still more welcome enclosure, was duly received. The girls celebrated the event with a little breakfast feast—they ate water-cresses, and Primrose and Jasmine had a sardine each to add flavor to their bread and butter. Whatever happened, Daisy always had her fresh egg, which she shared with the Pink, for the Pink had been brought up daintily, and appreciated the tops of fresh eggs. On this occasion Mrs. Dove herself brought up Primrose's letter. Letters came so seldom to the girls that Mrs. Dove felt it quite excusable to gaze very hard at the inscription, to study the name of the post town which had left its mark on the envelope, and lingering a little in the room, under cover of talking to Jasmine, to watch Primrose's face as she opened the cover.
"It is from Mr. Danesfield, is it not, Primrose?" exclaimed Jasmine—"Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Dove; no I didn't much care for that new story which is begun in The Downfall."
Mrs. Dove had a habit of dropping little curtseys when she meant to be particularly deferential—she now dropped three in succession, and said in a high-pitched, and rather biting voice—
"It isn't to be expected that the opinions of young ladies and of women who have gone through their world of experience, and therefore know what's what, should coincide. I leave you ladies three to read your refreshing news from absent friends."
Mrs. Dove then turned her back, and meekly shutting the door behind her, left the girls to themselves.
"Them attics have become rather too uppish for my taste," she said to Dove when she got downstairs. "I took them a letter just now, and, my word! they had not eyes nor ears for me, though I toiled up all the weary stairs, which my shortness of breath don't agree to. It wasn't even 'Thank you very much, Mrs. Dove,' but all three of them, their eyes was fixed on the letter as if they'd eat it. It's my belief, Dove, that they're short of funds, for when I went yesterday to ask for the trifling loan of tenpence three-farthings to pay the cobbler for Tommy's boots, Miss Mainwaring said, as pretty as you please, but very prim and firm—'I haven't really got the money, Mrs. Dove.' Well, well, I've done a deal for those girls—elbow grease I've given them, and thought I've given them, and books for the improving of their intellecs I've lent them, and that's all the return I get, that when I bring up a letter it isn't even 'Thank you, Mrs. Dove.' What I say is this, Dove, shall I give the attics notice to quit?"
"By no manner of means," answered Dove—"you mark my words, Mrs. Dove, my only love, that why they were so flurried over the letter just received was because there was money in it. Don't you turn away nice, genteel, quiet-spoken young ladies from this house. There's most likely a postal order in that letter, and my name ain't Dove if I don't get my gleanings from it."
"Oh, fie, Dove! you will have your joke," answered his wife; but she said nothing further about giving the Mainwarings notice to quit.