‘No, they don’t,’ said Bella. ‘The trees see life from different aspects. Some have all the southern sun, and others all the northern blasts. You are like a carefully trained peach tree on a south wall, and I am a poor little shrub in a gloomy corner facing the north.’ ‘Bella,’ cried Beatrix, ‘do you seriously believe that there is much sunshine in my life?’ ‘Plenty,’ answered Bella. ‘You have never known the want of money.’ ‘But money cannot make happiness.’ ‘Perhaps not, but it can make a very good imitation; and I know that the want of money can make very real unhappiness.’ ‘Poor Bella!’ sighed Beatrix again. ‘Oh! as for me,’ said Bella, ‘I am very well off, since I’ve been at the Pipers. And then you have always been so kind to me. I am the favoured one of the family. But it is trying to see how my poor mother is worried, and how she worries every one else, in the struggle to make both ends meet. And now tell me about yourself, Beatrix. Papa said you had been ill.’ ‘Miss Scales and Mr. Namby have made up their minds that I am ill,’ answered Beatrix indifferently, ‘but except that I can’t sleep, I don’t think there’s much the matter.’ ‘But that is very dreadful,’ exclaimed Bella. ‘Do you mean to say that you are not able to sleep at all?’ ‘Very little. Sometimes I lie awake all night--sometimes I get up and walk about my room, and stare out of the window at the moor and the river. They look so strange and ghostlike in the dead of the night--not a bit like the moor and river we know by day. Sometimes I light my candle and read.’ ‘And you never sleep?’ ‘Towards the morning I sometimes drop off into a doze, but I always wake with a start, just as if the surprise of finding myself asleep had awakened me.’ ‘And hasn’t Mr. Namby given you anything to make you sleep?’ asked Bella. ‘No. He is giving me tonics, and he says when I get strong the sleeplessness will leave me. He has refused to give me an opiate, though I begged very hard for something that would send me to sleep.’ ‘That seems cruel,’ said Bella, ‘but I suppose he is right. I think he is a very clever little man. Mrs. Piper has more confidence in him than in Dr. Armytage, who has a big fee every time he comes over from Great Yafford, and who never seems to do anything but approve of what Mr. Namby is doing. Or perhaps he makes some slight alteration in the diet--recommends sago instead of tapioca--or madeira instead of sherry.’ ‘Is Mrs. Piper very ill?’ ‘Dreadfully ill, poor thing. It is an internal complaint that is killing her. She struggles against it, but I think she knows that it must be fatal.’ ‘How sad for her children.’ ‘Yes, poor little things. She is a very good mother--perhaps a little too strict, but most careful of her children. They will miss her dreadfully. I’m afraid Mr. Piper is the sort of man to marry again.’ ‘Oh, surely not?’ cried Beatrix, ‘that fat red-faced man--with a figure like a barrel. Who would marry him.’