We usually breakfasted alone with Mrs. Thorpe, who liked to sit chatting over her cup of tea, having regulated her domestic affairs at an early hour. We had not then learned to drink tea, and Mrs. Thorpe had had a pot of chocolate prepared for us. We sat sipping it, while she opened her great subject. "My dears, do you think you are making the most of your time?" We looked at each other, and smiled. "No, madam! We have been very lazy since we came hither!" answered Amabel. "Lucy and I were talking that matter over this very morning, and agreeing that we must set ourselves at work." "Why, that is well!" said Mrs. Thorpe, evidently much pleased. "I don't much believe in praise to the face, which is open disgrace, the old rhyme says. But I must needs say, that two more candid young people I never met with." Then reverting to her subject—"I think you told me you had learned music." "We learned to sing, and a little of the organ," Amabel answered. "How would you like to learn the harpsichord?" asked Mrs. Thorpe. Amabel's eyes sparkled. We had seen one of these wonderful instruments at Mrs. Lowther's school, whither we had gone one day with Mrs. Thorpe; and we had heard one of her young ladies play a lesson of Mr. Handel's. "Because!" continued Mrs. Thorpe without waiting for an answer, or perhaps seeing one in our faces. "I have taken a fine instrument from a lady in this town who owed me money, and had no other means of paying me; and I would rather you used it than not. I daresay now, you are thinking it was hard-hearted in me, to take the poor lady's harpsichord," added Mrs. Thorpe abruptly, changing the subject. "No, madam! I do not believe you would ever do anything hard!" I answered. "If the lady had been poor, and had gone in debt for necessaries, I should never have done it!" continued Mrs. Thorpe; "but such was not the case. She is a widow lady, with a handsome jointure enough, to maintain her as nicely as need be, in a somewhat quiet way, but that does not satisfy her. No! She must needs flaunt it with the finest in the county; and she has run in debt on every side, till there is hardly a tradesman within a mile who has her not on his books. Not one thing does she ever deny herself that she wants. Poor Gileson the confectioner, who has a sickly wife and six little ones, told me that she owed him more than fifty pounds.