“But if we’ve a coach, we must have horses, must not we?” said Ellen, “and they’ll cost a hundred more.” “Oh, we can have job horses, that will cost us little or nothing,” said Mrs. Dolly. “Say £150. a-year,” replied Maurice; “for I heard my master’s coachman telling that the livery-keeper in London declared as how he made nothing by letting him have job horses for £150. a-year.” “We are to have our own coach,” said Dolly, “and that will be cheaper, you know.” “But the coach won’t last for ever,” said Ellen; “it must be mended, and that will cost something.” “It is time enough to think of that when the coach wants mending,” said Mrs. Dolly; who, without giving herself the trouble of calculating, seemed to be convinced that every thing might be done for five thousand pounds. “I must let you know a little secret,” continued she. “I have written, that is, got a friend to write, to have the house at Paddington taken for a year; for I know it’s quite the thing for us, and we are only to give fifty pounds a-year for it: and you know that one thousand pounds would pay that rent for twenty years to come.” “But then,” said Ellen, “you will want to do a great many other things with that thousand pounds. There’s the coach you mentioned; and you said we must keep a footboy, and must see a deal of company, and must not grudge to buy clothes, and that we could not follow any trade, nor have a farm, nor do any thing to make money; so we must live on upon what we have. Now let us count, and see how we shall do it. You know, Maurice, that William Deane inquired about what we could get for our five thousand pounds, if we put it out to interest?” “Ay; two hundred a-year, he said.” “Well, we pay fifty pounds a-year for the rent of the house, and a hundred a-year we three and the boy must have to live upon, and there is but fifty pounds a-year left.” Mrs. Dolly, with some reluctance, gave up the notion of the coach; and Ellen proposed that five hundred pounds should be laid out in furnishing a haberdasher’s shop, and that the rest of their money should be put out to interest, till it was wanted. “Maurice and I can take care of the shop very well; and we can live well enough upon what we make by it,” said Ellen. Mrs. Dolly opposed the idea of keeping a shop; and observed that they should not, in that case, be gentlefolks. Besides, she said, she was sure the people of the house she had taken would never let it be turned into a shop. What Mrs. Dolly had said was indeed true. When they got to Paddington, they found that the house was by no means fit for a shop; and as the bargain was made for a year, and they could not get it off their hands without considerable loss, Ellen was forced to put off her prudent scheme. In the mean time she determined to learn how to keep accounts properly.