The fact of the case was that no good cook would endure Mrs. Piper’s watchfulness and suspicion, and those scathing denunciations which Mr. Piper sent out by the parlour-maid when the dishes were not to his liking. ‘I might have borne Mrs. Piper’s petty prying ways,’ remarked one of the Park cooks, after giving her mistress warning, ‘or I might have put up with Mr. Piper’s tempers; but I couldn’t stand him and her together. That was too much for Christian flesh and blood.’ The cook was dismissed, with inward groanings on the part of Mrs. Piper, and the money for the tradesmen was entrusted to Bella, who was to pay the bills on her way through the village, and to make divers complaints and objections which the cook might have omitted to deliver. ‘I never let a servant pay my bills if I can help it,’ said Mrs. Piper, ‘it gives them too much power.’ And Mrs. Piper gave another sigh for the days of old, when her villa in the Great Yafford Road had been kept as neat as a pin by two servants, and those two servants had been completely under their mistress’s thumb, when she herself had given her orders by word of mouth to the tradespeople, and not so much as a half-quartern loaf had come into the house without her knowledge and consent. The transition from the tight economies of mediocre comfort to the larger splendour of unlimited wealth had been a sore trial to Mrs. Piper. The change had come too late in her life. She could not reconcile herself to the cost of her grandeur, although her husband assured her that he was not spending half his income. ‘It may be so now, Piper,’ she replied, dubiously, ‘but when the children grow up you’ll find yourself spending more money. They’ll eat more, and their boots will come dearer. I feel the difference every year.’ ‘When I find myself with less than fifty thousand surplus capital, I shall begin to grumble, Moggie,’ said Mr. Piper, ‘but I ain’t going to make a poor mouth till then.’ ‘Well, Piper, of course it’s nice to live in a big place like this, and to feel oneself looked up to, and that the best of everything is hardly good enough for us; but still there are times when I feel as if you and me had been sent into the world to feed a pack of extravagant servants.’ ‘We can’t help that, my dear,’ answered Piper, cheerily. ‘Dukes and duchesses are the same.’ ‘Ah, but then you see dukes and duchesses are born to it. They’ve not been used to have their housekeeping in their own hands, as I have. I suppose it’s when I’m a little low that it preys upon me,’ mused Mrs. Piper, ‘but I do feel it very trying sometimes. When I think of the butter and lard that are used in this house it seems to me as if we must come to the workhouse. No fortune could be big enough to stand against it.’