Mrs. Dulcimer did not know what to say. Life had been so easy for her. All good things had fallen unsolicited into her lap. She had never known an ungratified want, except her yearning for a new drawing-room carpet. This glimpse of a pinched, overworked existence came upon her like a revelation. ‘But you must be so proud of your fine family,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer, bent on being cheerful; ‘so many of them--and all well and thriving.’ ‘Yes,’ sighed the house-mother, ‘they grow very fast, and they have fine healthy appetites. It’s better to pay the baker than the doctor, as I always say to Mr. Scratchell when he complains, but the bills _are_ very heavy.’ ‘Now mind, Bella, I shall expect to see you often at the Vicarage,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer, with her sweetest smile. ‘You are not to wait for Miss Harefield to bring you, but you are to come and see me, you know, in a friendly way--and bring your work. I know you are clever at fancy work.’ ‘She is clever at everything,’ said the mother, with a doleful pride. ‘I never knew such hands as Bella’s. She can turn them to anything.’ ‘Bring your work of an afternoon then, Bella, when your mother can spare you, and come and sit with me. Mr. Culverhouse often drops in after tea.’ And then with much hand-shaking and cordiality, kindly Mrs. Dulcimer took her leave, and went home happy, her mind glowing with triumphant benevolence, feeling that she had employed her afternoon in a manner that St. Paul himself must have approved. ‘It’s all very well for Clement to talk about charity being a passive virtue,’ she reflected. ‘Passive good nature would never get that girl comfortably married. Five daughters, and the father without a sixpence to give them! Poor dear girls! Husbands must be found for them somehow.’ Bella Scratchell felt curiously fluttered after the Vicar’s wife was gone. The noise of the home tea-table, those rough boys, those boisterous unkempt girls, with hair like horses’ manes, and an uncomfortable habit of stretching across the table for everything they wanted, seemed a shade more trying than usual. ‘Now then, Greedy,’ cried Adolphus, the second boy, to his sister Flora. ‘I would scrape the pot if I was you. Yah!’ looking into an empty marmalade pot. ‘Not a vestige left. I say, Bella, you might stand a pot of marmalade now and then.’ The boys were in the habit of making random demands upon Bella’s private means, but were not often successful. ‘I’m sure you want no temptation to eat bread and butter,’ she said. ‘It would be sheer cruelty to ma.’ What bliss to be away from them all! This noisy circle--the odour of Dorset butter--the poor mother’s worried looks, and frequent getting up to see after this and that--the scolding and disputing--the domestic turmoil.