‘I should have thought Mr. Culverhouse had more sense. Why, he could no more afford to marry than his brother can afford to live at Culverhouse Castle.’ ‘He has talent and energy, and is sure to succeed, and with such a well-trained economical wife as Bella----’ ‘Well, I am sorry to find that Bella has got marriage and love-making into her head. I shall expect to see a difference in her with the children----’ ‘Oh, but I assure you----’ In vain did poor Mrs. Dulcimer protest. Mrs. Piper had a fixed idea that a governess ought to have nothing to do with the tender passion. Had she not turned away Miss Green for no other reason than because that unfortunate young person wrote long letters to a young man in New Zealand, to whom she had been engaged for seven years, and to whom she expected to be engaged for seven years more, before he would be rich enough to marry her? ‘It was such a distraction to her mind, you see, my dear,’ Mrs. Piper told her intimate friends. ‘I couldn’t possibly allow it.’ Mrs. Dulcimer left the Park, after having done her _protégée_ some injury, with the best intentions. From the Park she went to the village, and stopped at Mr. Scratchell’s door. CHAPTER VIII. THE SCRATCHELLS AT HOME. MR. SCRATCHELL occupied a large red brick house at the beginning of the village street, a house that had once been one of the best, if not the best in Little Yafford, but which, in its present degenerated state, looked a very shabby habitation as compared with the smart Gothic villas of the Great Yafford professional men and tradesmen who had retired into gentility at Little Yafford. It had been built by a wealthy brewer, and still adjoined a thriving brewery. But as the age grew more civilized, the brewer removed his domestic life from the immediate vicinity of his vats and casks to a stuccoed mansion in fifteen acres of meadow land, _par excellence_ Park. There was a good garden behind the substantial roomy old house, and more outbuildings than the Scratchells had any worthy use for--but which made a wilderness or playground for the children, and for Mrs. Scratchell’s poor little family of fowls, which always had a shabby uncombed look, as of neglected poultry, but which laid more eggs than Mrs. Piper’s pampered Dorkings and Cochin Chinas. Here the Scratchells had lived for the last twenty years, Mr. Scratchell holding his tenement upon a repairing lease, which seemed to mean that he was to grub on in the best way he could in dilapidated premises, and never ask his landlord to do anything for him. Perhaps when the lease ran out there would be complications; but Mr. Scratchell hoped that, being a lawyer himself, he should be a match for any lawyer his landlord might set upon him, and that he should find a loophole whereby to escape the question of dilapidations.