‘As long as you don’t invite him to my best dinners I don’t mind,’ she told Mr. Piper, which was certainly a great concession from a young lady who, a year or so before, had not always been sure of having any dinner at all. Mr. Chumney looked on at Bella’s career, and had his own opinion about her, and said nothing. Miss Coyle said a great deal to him, and he let her talk, but he never committed himself by any more direct expression of opinion than was to be gleaned from a grave nod, or a significant shake of the head. This dumb show of his, and the general reticence of his manners, possessed a wonderful fascination for Miss Coyle. She opened her mind to him freely, and felt herself in the presence of supreme worldly wisdom. ‘If poor Mr. Piper were only like you, that foolish young woman would not venture upon such conduct,’ said Miss Coyle, whereupon Mr. Chumney lifted his dark eyebrows, and thrust his fingers into his waistcoat pockets, and breathed a gentle sigh. ‘Spending all her mornings riding about with that Captain Standish, a man of notoriously dissipated character,’ said Miss Coyle, who knew as much about the captain as she did about the inhabitants of the moon. ‘Ha!’ groaned Mr. Chumney, as if in assent to a general proposition which he could not confute. ‘And making a bosom friend of that flashy Miss Porkman, while she neglects her own sisters. Birds of a feather----’ ‘Flock together,’ concluded Mr. Chumney, venturing to commit himself so far. ‘How it is that Mr. Piper doesn’t see what is going on under his very nose is more than I can imagine.’ ‘Piper is a man in a thousand, madam,’ said Mr. Chumney. ‘But so foolishly confiding. Ah, Mr. Chumney, it is trying to see the present state of things, after having had the privilege of knowing the first Mrs. Piper.’ ‘True,’ sighed Chumney. ‘How different her habits were! She was a woman of real piety, equally anxious about this world and the next.’ ‘She never could keep her cook,’ said Chumney, doubtfully. ‘I have seen worse cooking at Piper’s table than ever I saw in my own humble lodging.’ ‘Poor Mrs. Piper was not fortunate with her servants,’ assented Miss Coyle, ‘but then she was such a good manager. No waste or riot in her time. How self-denying she was! To my own knowledge she rarely discarded a silk gown till it had been turned twice.’