"I meant to buy you some watches, but I see you have them already," continued Mrs. Deborah. "Did my brother send them?"
Amabel told the story of our watches, and I added that Captain Corbet left his respectful compliments for the ladies, and felt himself greatly obliged to them for giving a home to his niece.
Mrs. Deborah expressed herself very well-pleased, and said she was glad I had found such a friend. She read Prayers herself, requesting Amabel to read a psalm, and then asked us if we could not sing a hymn.
Then we went out into the town and dutifully followed the two elder ladies all the morning, watching to see Mrs. Deborah buy tea, and coffee, and loaf sugar, spices and other foreign commodities. All, these things were very high at that time, in consequence of the war with France. Tea, I remember, was thirteen shillings a pound for the best Bohea. Mrs. Deborah bought a chest of this and one of a cheaper sort, which Mrs. Chloe told me was to give away to the sick poor.
I saw that she paid ready money for every thing, and was very particular as to the quality of all her purchases for the house, while she was very indifferent as to those she made for her own dress. Mrs. Chloe bought two or three gowns for herself and Mrs. Philippa, showing a great deal of solicitude about the latter. She certainly tried her sister's patience to a considerable extent by her balancings between black lutestring and black paduasoy, chamois gloves and silk gloves, and I thought we should never get through.
At last, in desperation, I ventured to suggest that, as Mrs. Thorpe had the best stock in town, we should go to her, knowing that she had the knack of making her customers know their own minds. † So we got Mrs. Chloe comfortably set down at her counter with Amabel to attend on her, and Mrs. Deborah and I went to finish her marketing, meaning to take her up again.
† Or rather, I think, her own mind. She always made her customers buy what she pleased.—A. CAREY.
I was pretty well supplied with money—thanks to the liberal way in which Uncle Andrew filled my purse—and I asked my aunt's permission to buy some tea and sugar for Hannah Tubbs, and some sugar-candy for the children at the schools. This led to an inquiry as to the school, and a proposal to visit it. Aunt Deborah was much edified by the intelligent way in which the elder girls read in the Bible, and she pleased herself and me by giving a guinea toward the expenses of the school.
When we got back to Mrs. Thorpe's, we found Mrs. Chloe comfortably established in an arm-chair, discussing Mr. Thomson's poetry with Mr. Cheriton. Mrs. Thorpe had prepared a collation for us, which Mrs. Deborah was too kind-hearted to mortify her by refusing. Amabel and I were silent as in duty bound, but Mr. Cheriton was very sociable and pleasant with the elder ladies, sent a package of working materials to his mother and sister by Mrs. Deborah with his duty, and a pound of choice tobacco and snuff to the old rector.
"Do you not take snuff yourself, Mr. Cheriton?" asked Mrs. Deborah.