‘Don’t be a fool, Moggie,’ retorted the manufacturer, unmoved by this pathetic suggestion. ‘When I was in business I’ve lost five thousand pounds in a morning by the turn of the market, and I’ve come home and eat my dinner and never said a word to you about it. What’s your butter and lard against that?’ ‘Oh, Piper, I wonder you ever lived through it.’ ‘I wasn’t a fool,’ answered Piper, ‘and I knew that where there’s big gains there must be big losses, now and again. A man that’s afraid to lose a few odd thousands will never come out a millionaire.’ Ebenezer Piper had a high opinion of his children’s governess. He had heard Bella grinding Latin verbs with Brougham, and admired her tact and patience. He liked to see pretty faces about him, as he acknowledged with a noble candour, and Bella’s face seemed to him particularly agreeable. That pink and white prettiness was entirely to his taste. Something soft and fresh and peachy. The kind of woman who seemed created to acknowledge and submit to the superiority of man. Mrs. Piper had been a very fair sample of this pink and white order of beauty, when the rising manufacturer married her; but time and ill-health and a natural fretfulness had destroyed good looks which consisted chiefly of a fine complexion and a plump figure, and the Mrs. Piper of the present was far from lovely. Her Ebenezer was not the less devoted to her on that account. He bought her fine dresses, and every possible combination of ormolu and malachite, mother-o’-pearl and tortoiseshell, for her boudoir and drawing-room; and he told everybody that she had been a good wife to him, and a pretty woman in her time, ‘though nobody would believe it to look at her now.’ On her way from Mrs. Piper’s boudoir to the hall Miss Scratchell encountered the master of the house, coming out of the billiard-room, where he had been knocking the balls about in a thoughtful solitude. ‘How did you find the missus?’ he asked, after saluting Bella with a friendly nod. ‘Pretty much the same as usual, Mr. Piper. I’m afraid there is no change for the better. She looks worn and worried.’ ‘She will worry herself when there ain’t no call,’ said Piper. ‘She’s been bothering over those tradesmen’s books this morning, I’ll warrant, just as she used fifteen years ago when I allowed her five pounds a week for the housekeeping. She never did take kindly to a large establishment. She’s been wearing her life out about fiddle-faddle ever since we came here--and yet she had set her heart on being a great lady. She’s a good little woman, and I’m uncommonly fond of her, but she’s narrer-minded. I ain’t so blind but what I can see that.’ ‘She is all that is kind and good,’ said Bella, who had always a large balance of affection at call for anybody who was likely to be useful to her.