From a strictly legal point of view, you have a right of action against her, which I do not advise nor suppose you would care to exercise, although it is most annoying to have your plans upset in this manner, and more especially too when you went to the trouble and expense of going down to Southsea so as to make certain of securing comfortable quarters.
I would not advise your friend to have anything to do with those attractive advertisements which appear in the newspapers, offering home employment to gentlewomen at the rate of ten to thirty shillings a week. The dodge is little better than a swindle; perhaps not a swindle in a strictly legal sense, but a swindle all the same.
The way it is worked is this: you are asked to send two or three shillings in the first instance and in return you get a quantity of rubber stamps which you have to sell to your friends at a profit, and when you have disposed of them all (a most unlikely event) you buy more rubber stamps at wholesale prices and sell them at retail ones; or else you receive a packet of wool, which you have to knit into an impossible number of socks and comforters, and for which you will be paid a small sum for so many dozen pairs.
It is a particularly heartless swindle to my mind, because the unfortunate ladies who answer these advertisements can ill afford to waste even two or three shillings, and, of course, they are quite unable to sell the rubber stamps or similar rubbish received in return for their money.
I have received frequent complaints from ladies who have been taken in by this trick, and I should like to see all such advertisements expunged from the newspapers. The advertisement columns contain a good many traps for the unwary. For instance, there is the “lady” who is offering silver fish-knives for sale at an immense sacrifice, unused, and less than half the original value.
You will observe that the word is “value” not “cost”; but she omits to state that the value put upon them is that given to them by herself, and, curiously enough, she is offering a similar sacrifice every day in the year.
I do not suggest that there is any swindle in the above style of advertisement. It is a trick of the trade, and if you are sharp enough you will find that the same “lady” is offering other articles for sale also at a sacrifice in another part of the paper.
The fact also that nearly all these articles are advertised as “unused” ought to be sufficient to warn people that it is a dealer and not a private individual who is advertising; but people, especially ladies, my dear Dorothy, are so anxious to make a bargain that they cannot resist the temptation to purchase an article, with a fictitious value attached to it, at half price.
A similar article, if bought at a shop in the ordinary way, costs less and lasts longer; but then it would not profess to be a bargain—wherein lies the charm.
I am afraid that I cannot give you any comfort as regards the bill sent in by your stationer, whom you say you have already paid. If you cannot find or did not get a receipt from him you are powerless and will have to pay it over again.