‘And so I will, sir, for it’s real good stuff,’ answered Mr. Porkman, blinking at the straw-coloured wine in his green glass. The newly-married couple were to spend their honeymoon in Italy. Coarse as he was in appearance and manners, Mr. Piper had vague yearnings after the pleasures of refinement. He wanted to see the cities of Italy, and the pictures and statues with which he had been informed those cities abounded. He had not cared to travel in the first Mrs. Piper’s time, firstly because that lady’s health had been precarious, and secondly because she could not speak a word of any language except her own. Mr. Piper wanted a companion who could interpret for him, and assist him to squabble with innkeepers and hackney coachmen. Such a companion he felt he could have in Bella, and he would take a pride in exhibiting his pretty young wife at table-d’hôtes and in public places. He would like to be pointed out as a comfortable well-to-do man of middle age who had married a girl young enough to be his daughter. He was not ashamed of the disparity. It flattered his vanity. Bella looked very pretty by and by in a fawn coloured travelling dress and a pale blue bonnet. There was a carriage and four to take Mr. Piper and his bride to the railway station at Great Yafford. He had insisted upon four horses, though two could have done the work just as well. The postillions were an imposing spectacle--smartly clad in sky blue jackets, with satin favours pinned upon their breasts, and slightly the worse for beer. Happily the hired horses were of a sober breed, or Mr. and Mrs. Piper might have come to grief on the first stage of their journey. They were gone--amidst the usual shower of old slippers. The wedding guests departed immediately after. There was to be no dance, nothing to wind up the evening, as Clementina and all her younger sisters and brothers loudly lamented. ‘I should think you’d better all go off to your beds, after the way you stuffed yourselves all through the breakfast,’ said Mr. Scratchell. ‘I saw you.’ ‘What was the use of leaving things?’ demanded Herbert. ‘The pastrycook’s men will take everything back. They won’t leave us a crumb for to-morrow.’ Herbert was right. The confectioner’s men were already sweeping off the fragments of the feast--half-tongues--bodies of fowls--dilapidated pies. Mrs. Scratchell stood and watched them with regretful looks. The family might have subsisted for a week upon the savoury remains. The small Scratchells prowled round the tables and picked little bits out of the plates. Those manufacturing people had been delicate and wasteful in their eating. The broken bits were daintier than anything the little Scratchells had ever tasted before. ‘Come, clear out,’ cried the father, ‘you’ve all eaten too much already.’ But he thought it a hard thing that the pastrycook’s men should come down, like the locusts of Scripture, and make barrenness in the land, after Mr. Piper had paid for everything.