Bella abandoned the lessons as hopeless. She could not go home in this flood of rain. She stood at the window, watching the storm, while her pupils, released from the thraldom of study, and grown hardened to the tempest, rioted about the room, knocked over the chairs, pelted each other with lesson books, and concluded every argument with fisticuffs. She did not attempt to check this youthful exuberance--first, because she knew any such endeavour would be worse than useless; and secondly, because the supervision of her pupils’ moral conduct was not in the bond. She was engaged and paid to teach them a smattering of various languages, history, grammar, geography, and to superintend their musical studies in the absence of the professor. Nothing more. At one o’clock the rain had ceased and the storm had abated, though the sky still looked heavy. One o’clock was Bella’s hour for leaving her pupils; half-past one was their hour for dinner. The half-hour between one o’clock and dinner-time was a period of peculiar strife and riot, the evil tempers of the youthful Pipers being exacerbated by hunger. There was always a warm conflict between them and the young woman told off for their service, who wanted them to have ‘their ’ands washed and their ’air brushed for dinner,’ and who was threatened with Mr. Piper’s condign displeasure if she sent them into the dining-room unkempt and uncleaned. In Mrs. Piper’s lifetime Bella had generally aided in this struggle, but she was now in the habit of going away directly the lessons were over. On this particular occasion she found Mr. Piper smoking his cigar in the hall, as she had found him very often lately. Hitherto she had contrived to slip by him with a friendly good morning, or at most a brief interchange of remarks about the weather, and a grateful little speech in acknowledgment of his last offering from the farm or the kitchen-garden. To-day she could not escape so easily. ‘You ain’t agoin’ yet, Beller,’ said Mr. Piper, laying his stumpy fingers on her arm. ‘Look at that there sky! It’ll rain ’eavens ’ard presently.’ ‘Then I had better get home before it begins,’ suggested Bella. ‘No, you don’t. I’m not going to be avoided in this way. Widowers ain’t poison, that a young woman need shun them as if her life was in danger. I want to have a serious talk with you, Beller. I’ve been wanting such a talk for a long time, but you’ve managed to give me the slip. This day I’m determined to say my say. You ain’t going out under that sky, and you are going to hear what I’ve got to tell you. That’s how it’s going to be.’ ‘You have such strength of will, Mr. Piper,’ said Bella, with her pretty laugh. ‘How could a poor little thing like me oppose you?’ ‘You ain’t a poor little thing,’ retorted Mr. Piper. ‘You’re a pretty little thing, and you ain’t poor. No young woman with your attractions can be poor. There’s always some one in the background ready to lay his ’art and ’and at her feet.’