‘My dear, why don’t you keep a man?’ Mr. Piper had sometimes inquired. ‘He’d do much better than these girls of yours, who never quite know their business.’ ‘Piper,’ his wife had answered solemnly, ‘I am not going to bring you to ruin. The girls are bad enough, what with their extravagance and their followers, but a man would eat us out of house and home before we knew where we were.’ ‘Please yourself, my dear,’ returned Mr. Piper, ‘and you’ll please me.’ Thus it was that the Piper establishment had been conducted upon a strictly middle-class footing. Now everything was on an aristocratic level. The present Mrs. Piper had a Frenchwoman for her own maid. She had a groom in top boots to sit behind her pony carriage. When she drove in her barouche the groom sat beside the coachman, and the two pairs of top-boots had a dazzling effect. Mr. Piper was rather astonished at the bootmaker’s bill. ‘My pet, here’s no end of money to pay for top-boots,’ he remarked. ‘I can’t say I see the use of ’em. Poor Moggie got on very well without top-boots.’ ‘I hope you don’t expect me to go out with a coachman in trousers,’ exclaimed Bella. ‘I might as well have a fly from the “Crown” at once.’ ‘My love, I should have thought that any kind of conveyance would have been a novelty to you, and that you’d hardly have been so particular about the livery,’ suggested Mr. Piper. ‘I could have gone on foot all my life,’ said Bella, ‘but if I am to have a carriage I must have it decently appointed. I don’t want to hang between heaven and earth, like Mahomet’s coffin.’ Mahomet’s coffin extinguished Mr. Piper. It had been flung at his head a good many times upon his venturing to object to his young wife’s extravagance. ‘And after all I am proud to see how well she does it,’ he said to himself, smiling an uxorious smile. ‘She’s a regular little duchess.’ And henceforward in familiar conversation Mr. Piper was apt to speak of his wife as the ‘Duchess.’ The house--which had now become his freehold--was made so fine that Mr. Piper hardly knew himself in it. Persian carpets of vivid and various hues were spread on the black and white marble of the hall, brocaded satin curtains, violet lined with amber, veiled the doors between hall and conservatory. The drawing-room was pale blue and gold, rich in easy chairs and tall gilded stands supporting Sèvres vases filled with flowers. The chief bedroom was apple-green. Everything was radiant and smiling, dazzling with gold and colour. ‘My word! it’s like living in a bower,’ said Mr. Piper, and he hummed a song that was then not quite forgotten-- ‘There’s a bower of roses by Bendemeer’s stream.’