The Scratchells had a comfortable old house in the village, but Miss Harefield was not allowed to visit there, although Isabella was her only friend and companion. Isabella might come to the Water House as often as she liked, but it was an understood thing that Beatrix was not to go to Mr. Scratchell’s, a distinction which Mrs. Scratchell and Isabella’s brothers and sisters resented as invidious. ‘We are not good enough for the heiress,’ said Clementina Scratchell, sarcastically. ‘She’s the most stuck-up young woman I ever saw,’ said Bertie, the eldest son, a sandy-complexioned, pug-nosed youth, who had been christened Herbert, but who had more the air of a Samuel or a Thomas. Such remarks as these, if overheard, always brought down the paternal wrath upon the utterer. Even Mrs. Scratchell would remark mildly that poor people must not quarrel with their bread and butter, and that Mr. Harefield was a very good client to father, and that it was very kind of Miss Harefield to be so fond of Bella, although she did look down upon the others, which might be a little wounding to one’s feelings, but poor people must not be proud. This fact of their poverty had always been kept before the eyes of the young Scratchells. It encountered them at every turn. If the boys tore the knees of their trousers in forbidden climbing of trees, they were reminded mournfully by a desponding mother that their parents were hard-working people, and that these destructive habits were a direct wrong to those toil-worn bread-winners. ‘It isn’t as if your father began life with a fortune, Bertie,’ Mrs. Scratchell would say. ‘He has to work for every sixpence, and you ought to have thought of that before you climbed the mulberry tree.’