‘Oh dear, with you it is different. With your means you can always be doing good indirectly. See how much you have done for me. I owe you and Mr. Harefield my education, my good clothes, my power to help poor mamma. But I have only my time to give, and I am very happy to devote some of that to the poor, under Mr. Culverhouse’s guidance.’ ‘He is kind to you?’ interrogated Beatrix; ‘you like him?’ ‘He is more than kind to me. He is my master, my teacher, my guide! I cannot use such a poor word as liking to describe my feelings for him. I reverence--I almost worship him.’ ‘He is worthy of your esteem,’ said Beatrix, wondering a little at this gush of feeling from Bella. Mrs. Dulcimer felt that things were working round delightfully towards the realization of her matrimonial scheme. ‘I look upon it as quite a settled matter, Rebecca,’ she said one morning, when the all-important factotum was polishing the old sideboard, familiarly known as Uncle John. ‘Having the chimneys swept again before Christmas? yes, mum,’ replied Rebecca, driving her leather vigorously backwards and forwards across the shining wood. ‘They’ll want it. We begun fires extra early this year, and master do pile up the wood and coals, as if he wanted to keep himself in mind of Bloody Mary’s martyrs at Smiffell, and show his thankfulness that God made him a Protestant.’ ‘I wasn’t talking of the chimneys, Rebecca. I was thinking of Mr. Culverhouse and Miss Scratchell. He’s getting fonder of her every day.’ ‘He ought to be,’ retorted the maid, snappishly. ‘She runs after him hard enough. But if I was you, ‘um, I’d leave him to find out his own feelings. Forced affections are like forced rhubarb, sour and watery. Uncle John’s in the sulks this morning. I can’t get him to shine nohow. It’s the damp weather, I suppose. It always makes him dull.’ ‘Well, Rebecca,’ said Mrs. Dulcimer, complacently, ‘if this marriage takes place soon, as I believe it will, I shall feel that I’ve been the salvation of Bella Scratchell. If you could see her wretched home----’ ‘I’ve seen the maid-of-all-work,’ replied Rebecca, curtly, ‘that’s enough for me. I’ve no call to see inside the house.’ Hopefully as things were progressing in Mrs. Dulcimer’s estimation, the active beneficence of that amiable woman urged her to take some step which should place matters on a more decided footing. It was more than a month since she had taken Cyril and Bella under her protection, and she felt that it was time the gentleman should declare himself. He had received every encouragement to speak; he had evidently been touched by Bella’s efforts for the good of her species. He admired Bella’s taste and industry, her neatness of attire and amiable manners. What more could he want?