‘At seven to-morrow, remember,’ she said.
‘I shall be there, mum,’ answered Mr. Piper.
CHAPTER II.
MR. PIPER IS ACCEPTED.
Mrs. Dulcimer’s tea party was a success. Bella appeared in her prettiest muslin gown—an embroidered Indian muslin that Beatrix had given her, with a great deal besides, when she went into mourning. She wore blue ribbons, and was bright with all the colour and freshness of her young beauty. Mr. Piper felt himself very far gone as he sat opposite her at tea. He hardly knew what he was eating, though he was a man who usually considered his meals a serious part of life, and though Rebecca had surpassed herself in the preparation of a chicken salad.
The evening was lovely, the sunset a study for Turner, and after tea Mrs. Dulcimer took Mr. Piper into the garden to show him her famous roses. Once there the worthy manufacturer was trapped. Bella was in faithful attendance upon the Vicar’s wife, and presently Rebecca came, flushed and breathless, to say that her mistress was wanted; whereupon, with many apologies, Mrs. Dulcimer left Mr. Piper and Miss Scratchell together.
‘Bella can show you the rest of the garden,’ she said as she hurried off.
‘Take me down by the gooseberry bushes, Bella,’ said Mr. Piper. ‘It’s shadier and more retired there.’
And in that shady and retired spot, with the rugged old plum trees and pear trees on the crumbly red wall looking at them, and the happy snails taking their evening promenades under the thorny gooseberry bushes, and the luxuriant scarlet runners making a curtain between these two lovers and the outside world, Mr. Piper—in fewest and plainest words—repeated his offer, and this time was not refused.
‘Bella,’ he exclaimed, with a little gush of emotion, putting his betrothed’s small hand under his elephantine arm, ‘I’ll make you the happiest woman in the three Ridings. You shall have everything that heart can wish. Poor Maggie never could cotton to her position. My good fortune came too late for her. She had got into a groove when I was a struggling man, and in that groove she stuck. She tried hard to play the lady; but she couldn’t manage it, poor soul. She was always the anxious hard-working housewife at bottom. There’s no rubbing the spots out of the leopard’s hide, or whitening the Ethiopian, you see, Bella. Now you were born a lady.’