‘Take me down by the gooseberry bushes, Bella,’ said Mr. Piper. ‘It’s shadier and more retired there.’ And in that shady and retired spot, with the rugged old plum trees and pear trees on the crumbly red wall looking at them, and the happy snails taking their evening promenades under the thorny gooseberry bushes, and the luxuriant scarlet runners making a curtain between these two lovers and the outside world, Mr. Piper--in fewest and plainest words--repeated his offer, and this time was not refused. ‘Bella,’ he exclaimed, with a little gush of emotion, putting his betrothed’s small hand under his elephantine arm, ‘I’ll make you the happiest woman in the three Ridings. You shall have everything that heart can wish. Poor Maggie never could cotton to her position. My good fortune came too late for her. She had got into a groove when I was a struggling man, and in that groove she stuck. She tried hard to play the lady; but she couldn’t manage it, poor soul. She was always the anxious hard-working housewife at bottom. There’s no rubbing the spots out of the leopard’s hide, or whitening the Ethiopian, you see, Bella. Now you were born a lady.’ Bella simpered and blushed. ‘I shall try not to disgrace your fortune,’ she said, meekly. ‘Disgrace it! Why, you’ll set it off by your prettiness and your nice little ways. I mean to get you into county society, Bella. I never tried it on with Mrs. P., for I felt she wasn’t up to it; but I shall take you slap in among the county folks.’ Bella shuddered. The little she had seen and heard of county people led her to believe that they were very slow to open their doors to such men as Mr. Piper. ‘Mrs. P. never had but one hoss and a broom,’ said the widower, walking his chosen one briskly up and down behind the curtain of scarlet runners. ‘You shall have a pair. I think you was made for a carriage and pair. Shall it be a landau or a b’rouche?’ Bella opined, with all modesty, that she would prefer a barouche. ‘You’re right,’ exclaimed Mr. Piper, ‘a woman looks more queenly in a barouche. And you can have poor Mrs. P.’s brougham done up for night work. And you shall have a chaise and the prettiest pair of ponies that can be bought for money, and then you can drive me about on fine afternoons. I’m getting of an age when a man likes to take his ease, and there’s nothing nicer to my fancy than sitting behind a handsome pair of ponies driven by a pretty woman. Can you drive?’ ‘I dare say I could if I tried,’ answered Bella. ‘Ah, I’ll have you taught. You’ll have a good deal to learn when you are Mrs. Piper, but you’re young enough to take kindly to a change in your circumstances. Poor Moggie wasn’t. Her mind was always in the bread-pan or the butcher’s book.’