Having made her house beautiful, Mrs. Piper’s next desire naturally was to exhibit her splendour to the envious eyes of people with inferior houses. She therefore began to issue invitations on as large a scale as the neighbourhood allowed. These were not all responded to as cordially as she would have wished. Lady Jane Gowry had honoured Bella with a condescending call, but she flatly declined Mr. and Mrs. Piper’s invitation to dinner, on the ground that at her age she could not afford to extend the circle of her visiting acquaintance. ‘The people I dine with are people I have known for half a century,’ she wrote to Mrs. Piper. ‘I am too old to go out often, so I only go to very old friends. But if you and Mr. Piper like to come and take a cup of tea with me any Tuesday evening I shall be very happy to see you.’ ‘After all, Lady Jane’s chestnut wig and violet-powdered complexion are not much loss,’ said Bella. ‘No, they ain’t, but I should like to have taken the old woman to dinner upon my arm, before the Porkmans and the Wigzells,’ remarked Mr. Piper. ‘I don’t believe they ever sat down to dinner with a title in the whole course of their natural lives. Wouldn’t old Timperley have stared! Earls’ daughters don’t come his way often, I reckon.’ Bella found that she would have to content herself in a great measure with the society of the Timperleys, the Porkmans, the Wigzells, and all the ramifications of those family trees. Everybody in this set was rich, and the chief struggle of everybody’s life seemed to be to spend more money upon display than his or her neighbour. The men boasted of their cellars, and vied with each other in giving high prices for their wines. A few loftier spirits bought pictures, and talked patronizingly of their favourite Royal Academicians. They seemed to think that Frith and Millais had been created for them, like Holbein for Henry the Eighth, or Vandyke for Charles the First. They all lived in brand-new houses within a few miles of Great Yafford, houses built by themselves, all spick and span and fresh from the builder’s hand, with not so much as an elderly apple-tree on the premises.