Bella sat shivering at the paternal wrath. Mrs. Scratchell was weeping dumbly. All the younger Scratchells were ready to lift up their voices in a chorus of condemnation. Bella’s folly in refusing Mr. Piper was, in their eyes, a personal injury. ‘You would not ask me to marry a man I cannot love, would you, father?’ faltered Bella; ‘a man I can hardly respect.’ ‘You cannot respect fifteen thousand a year?’ cried Mr. Scratchell. ‘Then, in the name of all that’s reasonable, what can you respect?’ ‘He is so rough-mannered and dictatorial,’ urged Bella, ‘so stout and puffy. And it is really dreadful to hear him murder the Queen’s English.’ Mr. Scratchell looked round at his assembled family with a wrathful glare, as if he were calling upon them all to behold this ridiculous daughter of his. ‘That ever I should have bred and reared such foolishness!’ he exclaimed. ‘What’s that fairy tale you were reading the little ones, mother, about the Princess and the seven feather beds? She had seven feather beds to sleep upon, one atop of the other, and couldn’t rest because there was a parched pea under the bottom one. There’s your proud Princess for you!’ pointing at his tearful daughter. ‘She turns up her nose at fifteen thousand a year because the owner of it doesn’t arrange his words according to Lindley Murray. Why, I never had much opinion of Lindley Murray myself, and, what’s more, I never could understand him.’ ‘Father, it isn’t a question of bad grammar. If I loved Mr. Piper, or felt that I could teach myself to love him, I shouldn’t care how badly he talked. But I cannot love him.’ ‘Who asks you to love him?’ cried Mr. Scratchell, folding and unfolding his newspaper violently, in a whirlwind of indignation. ‘Nobody has made mention of love--not Piper himself, I warrant. He’s too sensible a man. You are only asked to marry him, and to do your duty in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call you. And very grateful you ought to be for having been called to fifteen thousand a year. Think what you can do for your brothers and sisters, and your poor harassed mother! There’s a privilege for you. And if Piper should take to buying property hereabouts, and give me the collection of his rents, there’d be a lift for me.’ Then Mrs. Scratchell feebly, and with numerous gasps and choking sobs, uplifted her maternal voice, and made her moan.