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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Paste Jewels, by John Kendrick Bangs
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Paste Jewels
+       Being Seven Tales of Domestic Woe
+
+
+Author: John Kendrick Bangs
+
+
+
+Release Date: September 16, 2014  [eBook #4930]
+[This file was first posted on 27 March 2002]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PASTE JEWELS***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1897 Harper and Brothers edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                          [Picture: Book cover]
+
+                             [Picture: Jane]
+
+
+
+
+
+                               PASTE JEWELS
+
+
+                   _Being Seven Tales of Domestic Woe_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                    BY
+                           JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
+
+                  “They also serve who only stand and wait.”
+
+                      [Picture: Decorative graphic]
+
+                            NEW YORK & LONDON
+                       HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+                                   1897
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                    TO
+
+                                 E. L. N.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+IT may interest the readers of this collection of tales, if there should
+be any such, to know that the incidents upon which the stories are based
+are unfortunately wholly truthful.  They have one and all come under the
+author’s observation during the past ten years, and with the exception of
+“Mr. Bradley’s Jewel,” concerning whom it is expressly stated that she
+was employed through lack of other available material, not one of the
+servants herein made famous or infamous, as the case may be, was employed
+except upon presentation of references written by responsible persons
+that could properly have been given only to domestics of the most
+sterling character.  It is this last fact that points the moral of the
+tales here presented, if it does not adorn them.
+
+                                                                  J. K. B.
+
+YONKERS, N. Y., 1897
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                        PAGE
+THE EMANCIPATION OF THADDEUS               3
+MR. BRADLEY’S JEWEL                       45
+UNEXPECTED POMP AT THE PERKINS’S          71
+AN OBJECT-LESSON                         101
+THE CHRISTMAS GIFTS OF THADDEUS          123
+A STRANGE BANQUET                        149
+JANE                                     181
+
+
+
+
+THE EMANCIPATION OF THADDEUS
+
+
+THEY were very young, and possibly too amiable.  Thaddeus was but
+twenty-four and Bessie twenty-two when they twain, made one, walked down
+the middle aisle of St. Peter’s together.
+
+Everybody remarked how amiable she looked even then; not that a bride on
+her way out of church should look unamiable, of course, but we all know
+how brides do look, as a rule, on such occasions—looks difficult of
+analysis, but strangely suggestive of determined timidity, if there can
+be such a quality expressed in the human face.  It is the natural
+expression of one who knows that she has taken the most important step of
+her life, and, on turning to face those who have been bidden to witness
+the ceremony, observes that the sacredness of the occasion is somewhat
+marred by the presence in church of the unbidden curiosity-seekers, who
+have come for much the same reason as that which prompts them to go to
+the theatre—to enjoy the spectacle.  But Bessie’s face showed nothing but
+that intense amiability for which she had all her life long been noted;
+and as for Thaddeus, he never ceased to smile from the moment he turned
+and faced the congregation until the carriage door closed upon him and
+his bride, and then, of course, he had to, his lips being otherwise
+engaged.  Indeed, Thaddeus’s amiability was his greatest vice.  He had
+never been known to be ill-natured in his life but once, and that was
+during the week that Bessie had kept him in suspense while she was making
+up her mind not to say “No” to an important proposition he had made—a
+proposition, by-the-way, which resulted in this very ceremony, and was
+largely responsible for the trials and tribulations which followed.
+
+Thaddeus was rich—that is, he had an income and a vocation; a charming
+little home was awaiting their coming, off in a convenient suburb; and,
+best of all, Bessie was an accomplished house-keeper, having studied
+under the best mistresses of that art to be found in the country.  And
+even if she had not completely mastered the art of keeping house,
+Thaddeus was confident that all would go well with them, for their
+waitress was a jewel, inherited from Bessie’s mother, and the cook,
+though somewhat advanced in years, was beyond cavil, having been known to
+the family of Thaddeus for a longer period than Thaddeus himself had
+been.  The only uncertain quantity in the household was Norah, the
+up-stairs girl, who was not only new, but auburn-haired and of Celtic
+extraction.
+
+Under such circumstances did the young couple start in life, and many
+there were who looked upon them with envy.  At first, of course, the
+household did not run as smoothly as it might have done—meals were late,
+and served with less ceremony than either liked; but, as Bessie said, as
+she and Thaddeus were finishing their breakfast one morning, “What could
+you expect?”
+
+To which Thaddeus, with his customary smile, replied “What, indeed!  We
+get along much better than I really thought we should with old Ellen.”
+
+Old Ellen was the cook, and she had been known to Thaddeus as “Old Ellen”
+even before his lips were able to utter the words.
+
+“Ellen has her ways, and Jane has hers,” said Bessie.  “After Jane has
+got accustomed to Ellen’s way of getting breakfast ready, she will know
+better how to go about her own work.  I think, perhaps, cook’s manner is
+a little harsh.  She made Jane cry about the omelet this morning; but
+Jane is teary, anyhow.”
+
+“It wouldn’t do to have Ellen oily and Jane watery,” Thaddeus answered.
+“They’d mix worse than ever then.  We’re in pretty good luck as it is.”
+
+“I think so, too, Teddy,” Bessie replied; “but Jane is so foolish.  She
+might have known better than to send the square platter down to Ellen for
+an omelet, when the omelet was five times as long as it was broad.”
+
+“You always had square omelets, though, at your house—that is, whenever I
+was there you had,” said Thaddeus.  “And I suppose Jane’s notion is that
+as things happened under your mother’s régime, so they ought to happen
+here.”
+
+“Possibly that was her notion,” replied Bessie; “but, then, in your
+family the omelets were oblong, and Ellen is too old to depart from her
+traditions.  Old people get set in their ways, and as long as results are
+satisfactory, we ought not to be captious about methods.”
+
+“No, indeed, we shouldn’t,” smiled Thaddeus; “but I don’t want you to
+give in to Ellen to too great an extent, my dear.  This is your home, and
+not my mother’s, and your ways must be the ways of the house.”
+
+“Ellen is all right,” returned Bessie, “and I am so delighted to have
+her, because, you know, Teddy dear, she knows what you like even better,
+perhaps, than I do—naturally so, having grown up in your family.”
+
+“Reverse that, my dear.  Our family grew up on Ellen.  She set the
+culinary pace at home.  Mother always let her have her own way, and it
+may be she is a little spoiled.”
+
+“Do you know, Teddy, I wonder that, having had Ellen for so many years,
+your mother was willing to give her up.”
+
+“Oh, I can explain that,” Thaddeus answered.  “I’m the youngest, you
+know; the rest of the family were old enough to be weaned.  Besides,
+father was getting old, and he had a notion that the comforts of a hotel
+were preferable to the discomforts of house-keeping.  Father likes to eat
+meals at all hours, and the annunciator system of hotel life, by which
+you can summon anything in an instant, from a shower-bath to a feast of
+terrapin, was rather pleasing to him.  He was always an admirer of the
+tales of the genii, and he regards the electric button in a
+well-appointed hotel as the nearest approach to the famous Aladdin lamp
+known to science.  You press the button, and your genii do the rest.”
+
+“But a hotel isn’t home,” said Bessie.
+
+“A hotel isn’t this home,” answered Thaddeus.  “Love in a cottage for me;
+but, Bessie, perhaps you—perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to
+speak to Jane and Ellen this morning about their differences.  I am an
+hour late now.”
+
+Then Thaddeus kissed Bessie, and went down to business.
+
+On Thaddeus’s departure Bessie’s cheerfulness also deserted her, and for
+the first time in her life she felt that it would do her good if she
+could fly out at somebody—somebody, however, who was not endeared to the
+heart of Thaddeus, or too intimately related to her own family, which
+left no one but Norah upon whom to vent the displeasure that she felt.
+Norah was, therefore, sought out, and requested rather peremptorily to
+say how long it had been since she had dusted the parlor; to which Norah
+was able truthfully to answer, “This mornin’, mim.”  Whereupon Bessie’s
+desire to be disagreeable departed, and saying that Norah could now clean
+the second-story front-room windows, she withdrew to her own snug
+sewing-room until luncheon should be served.  She was just a trifle put
+out with Norah for being so efficient.  There is nothing so affronting to
+a young house-keeper as the discovery that the inherited family jewels,
+upon whom much reliance has been placed, are as paste alongside of the
+newly acquired bauble from whom little was expected.  It was almost
+unkind in Norah, Bessie thought, to be so impeccably conscientious when
+Jane and Ellen were developing eccentricities; but there was the
+consoling thought that when they had all been together a month or two
+longer, their eccentricities would so shape themselves that they would
+fit into one another, and ultimately bind the little domestic structure
+more firmly together.
+
+“Perhaps if I let them alone,” Bessie said to herself, “they’ll forget
+their differences more quickly.  I guess, on the whole, I will say
+nothing about it.”
+
+That night, when Thaddeus came home, the first thing he said to his wife
+was: “Well, I suppose you were awfully firm this morning, eh?  Went down
+into the kitchen and roared like a little tyrant, eh?  I really was
+afraid to read the paper on the way home.  Didn’t know but what I’d read
+of a ‘Horrid Accident in High Life.  Mrs. Thaddeus Perkins’s Endeavor to
+Maintain Discipline in the Household Results Fatally.  Two Old Family
+Servants Instantly Killed, and Three of the Kitchen Table Legs Broken by
+a Domestic Explosion!’”
+
+“Be serious, Thaddeus,” said Bessie.
+
+And Thaddeus became instantly serious.  “They—they haven’t left us, have
+they?” he whispered, in an awe-struck tone.
+
+“No.  I—I thought I’d let them fight it out between themselves,” replied
+Bessie.  “You see, Thaddeus, servants are queer, and do not like to have
+their differences settled by others than themselves.  It’ll work out all
+right, if we let them alone.”
+
+“I don’t know but that you are right,” said Thaddeus, after a few moments
+of thought.  “They’re both sensible girls, and capable of fighting their
+own battles.  Let’s have dinner.  I’m hungry as a bear.”
+
+It was half-past six o’clock, and the usual hour for dinner.  At 8.10
+dinner was served.  The intervening time was consumed by Jane and Ellen
+endeavoring to settle their differences by the silent, sniffy method—that
+is, Jane would sniff, and Ellen would be silent; and then Ellen would
+sniff, and Jane would be silent.  As for Thaddeus and Bessie, they were
+amused rather than angry to have the dear little broiled chicken Bessie
+had provided served on the large beef-platter; and when the pease came up
+in a cut-glass salad-dish, Thaddeus laughed outright, but Bessie’s eyes
+grew moist.  It was too evident that Jane and Ellen were not on speaking
+terms, and there was strong need for some one to break the ice.
+Fortunately, Bessie’s mother called that evening, and some of her time
+was spent below-stairs.  What she said there only Ellen and Jane knew,
+but it had its effect, and for two or three weeks the jewels worked
+almost as satisfactorily as did Norah, the new girl, and quite
+harmoniously.
+
+“Bessie,” said Thaddeus, one night as they ate their supper, “does it
+occur to you that the roast is a little overdone to-night?”
+
+“Yes, Teddy, it is very much overdone.  I must speak to Ellen about it.
+She is a little careless about some things.  I’ve told her several times
+that you like your beef rare.”
+
+“Well, I’d tell her again.  Constant dropping of water on its surface
+will wear away a stone, and I think, perhaps, the constant dropping of an
+idea on a cook’s head may wear away some of the thickest parts of that—at
+least, until it is worn thin enough for the idea to get through to where
+her brain ought to be.  You might say to her, too, that for several
+nights past dinner has been cold.”
+
+“I’ll speak to her in the morning,” was Bessie’s reply; and the dear
+little woman was true to her purpose.
+
+“She explained about the beef and the cold dinner, Ted,” she said, when
+Thaddeus came home that afternoon.
+
+“Satisfactorily to all hands, I hope?” said Thaddeus, with his usual
+smile.
+
+“Yes, perfectly.  In fact, I wonder we hadn’t thought of it ourselves.
+In the old home, you know, the dinner-hour was six o’clock, while here it
+is half-past six.”
+
+“What has that got to do with it?” asked Thaddeus.
+
+“How obtuse of you, Teddy!” exclaimed Bessie.  “Don’t you see, the poor
+old thing has been so used to six-o’clock dinners that she has everything
+ready for us at six?  And if we are half an hour late, of course things
+get cold; or if they are kept in the oven, as was the case with the beef
+last night, they are apt to be overdone?”
+
+“Why, of course.  Ha!  Ha!  Wonder I didn’t think of that,” laughed
+Thaddeus, though his mirth did seem a little forced.  “But—she’s—she’s
+going to change, I suppose?”
+
+“She said she’d try,” Bessie replied.  “She was really so very nice about
+it, I hadn’t the heart to scold her.”
+
+“I’m glad,” was all Thaddeus said, and during the rest of the meal he was
+silent.  Once or twice he seemed on the verge of saying something, but
+apparently changed his mind.
+
+“Are you tired to-night, dear?” said Bessie, as the dessert was served.
+
+“No.  Why?” said Thaddeus, shortly.
+
+“Oh, nothing.  I thought you seemed a little so,” Bessie answered.  “You
+mustn’t work too hard down-town.”
+
+“No, my dear girl,” he said.  “I won’t, and I don’t.  I was thinking all
+through dinner about those girls down-stairs.  Perhaps—perhaps I had
+better talk to them, eh?  You are so awfully kind-hearted, and it does
+seem to me as though they imposed a little on you, that’s all.  The salad
+to-night was atrocious.  It should have been kept on the ice, instead of
+which it comes to the table looking like a last year’s bouquet.”
+
+Bessie’s eyes grew watery.  “I’m afraid it was my fault,” she said.  “I
+ought to have looked after the salad myself.  I always did at home.  I
+suppose Jane got it out expecting me to prepare it.”
+
+“Oh, well, never mind,” said Thaddeus, desirous of soothing the troubled
+soul of his wife.  “I wouldn’t have mentioned it, only Jane does too much
+thinking, in a thoughtless way, anyhow.  Servants aren’t paid to think.”
+
+“I’ll tell you what, Thaddeus,” said Bessie, her spirits returning, “we
+are just as much to blame as they are; we’ve taken too much for granted,
+and so have they.  Suppose we spend the evening putting together a set of
+rules for the management of the house?  It will be lots of fun, and
+perhaps it will do the girls good.  They ought to understand that while
+our parents have had their ways—and reasonable ways—there is no reason
+why we should not have our ways.”
+
+“In other words,” said Thaddeus, “what we want to draw up is a sort of
+Declaration of Independence.”
+
+“That’s it, exactly,” Bessie replied.
+
+“Better get a slate and write them on that,” suggested Thaddeus, with a
+broad grin.  “Then we can rub out whatever Jane and Ellen don’t like.”
+
+“I hate you when you are sarcastic,” said Bessie, with a pout, and then
+she ran for her pad and pencil.
+
+The evening was passed as she had suggested, and when they retired that
+night the house of Perkins was provided with a constitution and by-laws.
+
+“I don’t suppose I shall recognize my surroundings when I get back home
+to-night,” said Thaddeus, when he waked up in the morning.
+
+“Why not?” asked Bessie.  “What strange transformation is there to be?”
+
+“The discipline will be so strict,” answered Thaddeus.  “I presume you
+will put those rules of ours into operation right away?”
+
+“I have been thinking about that,” said Bessie, after a moment.  “You
+see, Thad, there are a great many things about running a house that
+neither you nor I are familiar with yet, and it seems to me that maybe
+we’d better wait a little while before we impose these rules on the
+girls; it would be awkward to have to make changes afterwards, you know.”
+
+“There is something in that,” said Thaddeus; “but, after all, not so much
+as you seem to think.  All rules have exceptions.  I’ve no doubt that the
+cook will take exception to most of them.”
+
+“That’s what I’m afraid of, and as she’s so old I kind of feel as if I
+ought to respect her feelings a little more than we would Norah’s, for
+instance.  I can just tell you I shall make Norah stand around.”
+
+“I think it would be a good plan if you did,” said Thaddeus.  “I’m afraid
+Norah will die if you don’t.  She works too hard to be a real
+servant—real servants stand around so much, you know.”
+
+“Don’t be flippant, Thaddeus.  This is a very serious matter.  Norah is a
+good girl, as you say.  She works so much and so quickly that she really
+makes me tired, and I’m constantly oppressed with the thought that she
+may get through with whatever she is doing before I can think of
+something else to occupy her time.  But with her we need have none of the
+feeling that we have with Jane and Ellen.  She is young, and susceptible
+to new impressions.  She can fall in with new rules, while the other two
+might chafe under them.  Now, I say we wait until we find out if we
+cannot let well enough alone, and not raise discord in our home.”
+
+“There never was an Eden without its serpent,” sighed Thaddeus.  “I don’t
+exactly like the idea of fitting our rules to their idiosyncrasies.”
+
+“It isn’t that, dear.  I don’t want that, either; but neither do we wish
+to unnecessarily hamper them in their work by demanding that they shall
+do it our way.”
+
+“Oh, well, you are the President of the Republic,” said Thaddeus.  “You
+run matters to suit yourself, and I believe we’ll have the most
+prosperous institution in the world before we know it.  If it were a
+business matter, I’d have those rules or die; but I suppose you can’t run
+a house as you would a business concern.  I guess you are right.  Keep
+the rules a week.  Why not submit ’em to your mother first?”
+
+“I thought of that,” said Bessie.  “But then it occurred to me that as
+Ellen had served always under your mother, it would be better if we
+consulted her.”
+
+“I don’t,” said Thaddeus.  “She’d be sure to tell you not to have any
+rules, or, if she didn’t, she would advise you to consult with the cook
+in the matter, which would result in Ellen’s becoming President, and you
+and I taxpayers.  She used to run our old house, and now see the
+consequences!”
+
+“What are the consequences?” asked Bessie.
+
+“Mother and father have been driven into a hotel, and the children have
+all been married.”
+
+“That’s awful,” laughed Bessie.
+
+And so the rules were filed away for future reference.  That they would
+have remained on file for an indefinite period if Thaddeus had not asked
+a friend to spend a few weeks with him, I do not doubt.  Bessie grew
+daily more mistrustful of their value, and Thaddeus himself preferred the
+comfort of a quiet though somewhat irregular mode of living to the
+turmoil likely to follow the imposition of obnoxious regulations upon the
+aristocrats below-stairs.  But the coming of Thaddeus’s friend made a
+difference.
+
+The friend was an elderly man, with a business and a system.  He was a
+man, for instance, who all his life had breakfasted at seven, lunched at
+one, and dined at six-thirty, of which Thaddeus was aware when he invited
+him to make his suburban home his headquarters while his own house was
+being renovated and his family abroad.  Thaddeus was also aware that the
+breakfast and dinner hours under Bessie’s régime were nominally those of
+his friend, and so he was able to assure Mr. Liscomb that his coming
+would in no way disturb the usual serenity of the domestic pond.  The
+trusting friend came.  Breakfast number one was served fifteen minutes
+after the hour, and for the first time in ten years Mr. Liscomb was late
+in arriving at his office.  He had not quite recovered from the chagrin
+consequent upon his tardiness when that evening he sat down to dinner at
+Thaddeus’s house, served an hour and ten minutes late, Ellen having been
+summoned by wire to town to buy a pair of shoes for one of her sister’s
+children, the sister herself suffering from poverty and toothache.
+
+“I hope you were not delayed seriously this morning, Mr. Liscomb,” said
+Bessie, after dinner.
+
+“Oh no, not at all!” returned Liscomb, polite enough to tell an untruth,
+although its opposite was also a part of his system.
+
+“Ellen must be more prompt with breakfast,” said Thaddeus.  “Seven,
+sharp, is the hour.  Did you speak to her about it?”
+
+“No, but I intend to,” answered Bessie.  “I’ll tell her the first thing
+after breakfast to-morrow.  I meant to have spoken about it to-day, but
+when I got down-stairs she had gone out.”
+
+“Was it her day out?”
+
+“No; but her sister is sick, and she was sent for.  It was all right.
+She left word where she was going with Jane.”
+
+“That was very considerate of her,” said Liscomb, politely.
+
+“Yes,” said Bessie.  “Ellen’s a splendid woman.”
+
+Later on in the evening, about half-past nine, when Mr. Liscomb, wearied
+with the excitement of the first irregular day he had known from boyhood,
+retired, Thaddeus took occasion to say:
+
+“Bessie, I think you’d better tell Ellen about having breakfast promptly
+in the morning to-night, before we go to bed.”
+
+“Very well,” returned Bessie, “I’ll go down now and do it;” and down she
+went.  In a moment she was back.  “The poor thing was so tired,” she
+said, “that she went to bed as soon as dinner was cooked, so I couldn’t
+tell her.”
+
+“Why didn’t you send up word to her by Jane?”
+
+“Oh, she _must_ be asleep by this time!”
+
+“Oh!” said Thaddeus.
+
+It was nine o’clock the next morning when Ellen opened her eyes.
+Breakfast had been served a half-hour earlier, Jane and Bessie having
+cooked some eggs, which Bessie ate alone, since Thaddeus and Liscomb were
+compelled to take the eight-o’clock train to town, hungry and forlorn.
+Liscomb was very good-natured about it to Thaddeus, but his book-keeper
+had a woful tale to tell of his employer’s irritability when he returned
+home that night.  As for Thaddeus, he spoke his mind very plainly—to
+Liscomb.  Bessie never knew what he said, nor did any of the servants;
+but he said it to Liscomb, and, as Liscomb remarked later, he seemed like
+somebody else altogether while speaking, he was so fierce and determined
+about it all.  That night a telegram came from Liscomb, saying that he
+had been unexpectedly delayed, and that, as there were several matters
+requiring his attention at his own home, he thought he would not be up
+again until Sunday.
+
+Bessie was relieved, and Thaddeus was mad.
+
+“We _must_ have those rules,” he said.
+
+And so they were brought out.  Ellen received them with stolid
+indifference; Jane with indignation, if the slamming of doors in various
+parts of the house that day betokened anything.  Norah accepted them
+without a murmur.  It made no difference to Norah on what day she swept
+the parlor, nor did she seem to care very much because her “days at home”
+were shifted, so that her day out was Friday instead of Thursday.
+
+“Has Ellen said anything about the rules, my dear?” asked Thaddeus, a
+week or two later.
+
+“Not a word,” returned Bessie.
+
+“Has she ‘looked’ anything?”
+
+“Volumes,” Bessie answered.
+
+“Does she take exception to any of them?”
+
+“No,” said Bessie, “and I’ve discovered why, too.  She hasn’t read them.”
+
+Thaddeus was silent for a minute.  Then he said, quite firmly for him,
+“She must read them.”
+
+“_Must_ is a strong word, Teddy,” Bessie replied, “particularly since
+Ellen can’t read.”
+
+“Then you ought to read them to her.”
+
+“That’s what I think,” Bessie answered, amiably.  “I’m going to do it
+very soon—day after to-morrow, I guess.”
+
+“What has Jane said?” asked Thaddeus, biting his lip.
+
+Bessie colored.  Jane had expressed herself with considerable force, and
+Bessie had been a little afraid to tell Thaddeus what she had said and
+done.
+
+“Oh, nothing much,” she answered.  “She—she said she’d never worn caps
+like a common servant, and wasn’t going to begin now; and then she didn’t
+like having to clean the silver on Saturday afternoons, because the
+silver-powder got into her finger-nails; and that really is too bad,
+Teddy, because Saturday night is the night her friends come to call, and
+silver-powder is awfully hard to get out of your nails, you know; and, of
+course, a girl wants to appear neat and clean when she has callers.”
+
+“Of course,” said Thaddeus.  “And I judge by the appearance of the brass
+fenders that she doesn’t like to polish them up on Wednesday because it
+gives her a backache on Thursday, which is her day out.”
+
+Bessie’s eyes took on their watery aspect again.
+
+“Do the fenders look so very badly, Ted?” she asked.
+
+“They’re atrocious,” said Thaddeus.
+
+“I’m sorry, dear; but I did my best.  I polished them myself this
+afternoon; Jane had to go to a funeral.”
+
+“Oh, my!” cried Thaddeus.  “This subject’s too much for me.  Let’s go
+out—somewhere, anywhere—to a concert.  Music hath its charms to soothe a
+savage breast, and my breast is simply the very essence of wildness
+to-night.  Put on your things, Bess, and hurry, or I’ll suffocate.”
+
+Bessie did as she was told, and before ten o’clock the happy pair had
+forgotten their woes, nor do I think they would have remembered them
+again that night had they not found on their return home that they were
+locked out.
+
+At this even the too amiable Bessie was angry—very angry—unjustly, as it
+turned out afterwards.
+
+“They weren’t to blame, after all,” she explained to Thaddeus, when he
+came home the next night.  “I spoke to them about it, and they all
+thought we’d spend the night with your mother and father at the Oxford.”
+
+“They’re a thoughtful lot,” said Thaddeus.
+
+And so time passed.  The “treasures” did as they pleased; the dubious
+auburn-haired Norah continued her aggravating efficiency.  Bessie’s days
+were spent in anticipation of an interview of an unpleasant nature with
+Jane or Ellen “to-morrow.”  Thaddeus’s former smile grew less
+perpetual—that is, it was always visible when Bessie was before him, but
+when Bessie was elsewhere, so also was the token of Thaddeus’s
+amiability.  He chafed under the tyranny, but it never occurred to him
+but once that it would be well for him to interview Ellen and Jane; and
+then, summoning them fiercely, he addressed them mildly, ended the
+audience with a smile, and felt himself beneath their sway more than
+ever.
+
+Then something happened.  A day came and went, and the morrow thereof
+found Thaddeus dethroned from even his nominal position of head of the
+house.  There was a young Thaddeus, an eight-pound Thaddeus, a round,
+red-cheeked, bald-headed Thaddeus that looked more like the Thaddeus of
+old than Thaddeus did himself; and then, at a period in which man feels
+himself the least among the insignificant, did our hero find happiness
+unalloyed once more, for to the pride of being a father was added the
+satisfaction of seeing Jane and Ellen acknowledge a superior.  Make no
+mistake, you who read.  It was not to Thaddeus junior that these gems
+bowed down.  It was to the good woman who came in to care for the little
+one and his mother that they humbled themselves.
+
+“She’s great,” said Thaddeus to himself, as he watched Jane bustling
+about to obey the command of the temporary mistress of the situation as
+she had never bustled before.
+
+“She’s a second Elizabeth,” chuckled Thaddeus, as he listened to an order
+passed down the dumb-waiter shaft from the stout empress of the moment to
+the trembling queen of the kitchen.
+
+“She’s a little dictatorial,” whispered Thaddeus to his newspaper, when
+the monarch of all she surveyed gave him _his_ orders.  “But there are
+times, even in a Republic like this, when a dictator is an advantage.  I
+hate to see a woman cry, but the way Jane wept at the routing Mrs. Brown
+gave her this morning was a finer sight than Niagara.”
+
+But, alas! this happy state of affairs could not last forever.  Thaddeus
+was just beginning to get on easy terms with Mrs. Brown when she was
+summoned elsewhere.
+
+“Change of heir is necessary for one in her profession,” sighed Thaddeus;
+and then, when he thought of resuming the reins himself, he sighed again,
+and wished that Mrs. Brown might have remained a fixture in the household
+forever.  “Still,” he added, more to comfort himself than because he had
+any decided convictions to express—“still, a baby in the house will make
+a difference, and Ellen and Jane will behave better now that Bessie’s
+added responsibilities put them more upon their honor.”
+
+For a time Thaddeus’s prophecy was correct.  Ellen and Jane did do better
+for nearly two months, and then—but why repeat the old story?  Then they
+lapsed, that is all, and became more tyrannical than ever.  Bessie was so
+busy with little Ted that the household affairs outside of the nursery
+came under their exclusive control.  Thaddeus stood it—I was going to say
+nobly, but I think it were better put ignobly—but he had a good excuse
+for so doing.
+
+“A baby is an awful care to its mother,” he said; “a responsibility that
+takes up her whole time and attention.  I don’t think I’d better
+complicate matters by getting into a row with the servants.”
+
+And so it went.  A year and another year passed.  The pretty home was
+beginning to look old.  The bloom of its youth had most improperly
+faded—for surely a home should never fade—but there was the boy, a
+growing delight to his father, so why complain?  Better this easy-going
+life than one of domestic contention.
+
+Then on a sudden the boy fell ill.  The doctor came—shook his head
+gravely.
+
+“You must take him to the sea-shore,” he said.  “It is his only chance.”
+
+And to the sea-shore they went, leaving the house in charge of the
+treasures.
+
+“I have confidence in you,” said Thaddeus to Jane and Ellen on the
+morning of the departure, “so I have decided to leave the house open in
+your care.  Mrs. Perkins wants you to keep it as you would if she were
+here.  Whatever you need to make yourselves comfortable, you may get.
+Good-bye.”
+
+“What a comfort it is,” said Bessie, when they had reached the sea-shore,
+and were indulging in their first bit of that woful luxury,
+homesickness—“what a comfort it is to feel that the girls are there to
+look after things!  An empty house is such a temptation to thieves.”
+
+“Yes,” said Thaddeus.  “I hope they won’t entertain too much, though.”
+
+“Ellen and Jane are too old for that sort of thing,” Bessie answered.
+
+“How about Norah?”
+
+“Oh, I forgot to tell you.  There was nothing really for Norah to do, so
+I told her she could go off and stay with her mother on board-wages.”
+
+“Good!” said Thaddeus, with a pleased smile.  “It isn’t a bad idea to
+save, particularly when you are staying at the sea-shore.”
+
+In this contented frame of mind they lived for several weeks.  The boy
+grew stronger every day, and finally Thaddeus felt that the child was
+well enough to warrant his running back home for a night, “just to see
+how things were going.”  That the girls were faithful, of course, he did
+not doubt; the regularity with which letters addressed to him at home—and
+they were numerous—reached him convinced him of that; but the hamper
+containing the week’s wash, which Ellen and Jane were to send, and which
+had been expected on Thursday of the preceding week, had failed for once
+to arrive; the boy had worn one dress four days, Thaddeus’s collars were
+getting low, and altogether he was just a little uneasy about things.  So
+he availed himself of his opportunity and went home, taking with him a
+friend, in consideration of whom he telegraphed ahead to Ellen to prepare
+a good breakfast, not caring for dinner, since he and his companion
+expected to dine at the club and go to the theatre before going out to
+his home.
+
+The result would have been fatal to Bessie’s peace of mind had she heard
+of it during her absence from home.  But Thaddeus never told her, until
+it was a matter of ancient history, that when he arrived at home, a
+little after midnight, he found the place deserted, and was compelled to
+usher his friend in through the parlor window; that from top to bottom
+the mansion gave evidence of not having seen a broom or a dust-brush
+since the departure of the family; that Jane had not been seen in the
+neighborhood for one full week—this came from those living on adjoining
+property; that Ellen had been absent since early that morning, and was
+not expected to return for three days; and, crowning act of infamy, that
+he, Thaddeus, and his friend were compelled to breakfast next morning
+upon a half of a custard pie, a bit mouldy, found by the lord of the
+manor on the fast-melting remains of a cake of ice in the refrigerator.
+Whether it would have happened if Thaddeus had not been accompanied by a
+friend, whose laughter incited him to great deeds, or not I am not
+prepared to say, but something important did happen.  Thaddeus rose to
+the occasion, and committed an act, and committed it thoroughly.  The
+Thaddeus of old, the meek, long-suffering, too amiable Thaddeus,
+disappeared.  The famous smile was given no chance to play.  His wife was
+absent, and the smile was far away with her.  Thaddeus, with one fell
+blow, burst his fetters and became free.
+
+That afternoon, when he had returned to the seaboard, Bessie asked him,
+“How was the house?”
+
+“Beautiful,” said Thaddeus, quite truthfully; for it was.
+
+“Did Ellen say anything about the hamper?”
+
+“Not a word.”
+
+“Did you speak to her about it?”
+
+“Nope.”
+
+“Oh, Teddy!  How could you forget it?”
+
+To the lasting honor of Thaddeus be it said that he bore up under this
+unflinchingly.
+
+“Did you have a good breakfast, Ted?” Bessie asked, returning to the
+subject later.
+
+“Very,” said Thaddeus, thinking of the hearty meal he and his
+fellow-sufferer had eaten at the club after getting back to town.  “We
+had a tomato omelet, coffee, toast, rice cakes, tenderloin steak, and
+grits.”
+
+“Dear me!” smiled Bessie; she was so glad her Teddy had been so well
+treated.  “All that?  Ellen must have laid herself out.”
+
+“Yes,” said Thaddeus; “I think she did.”
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+All the following week Thaddeus seemed to have a load on his mind—a load
+which he resolutely refused to share with his wife—and on Friday he found
+it necessary to go up to town.
+
+“I thought this was your vacation,” remonstrated Bessie.
+
+“Well, so it is,” said Thaddeus.  “But—but I’ve got one or two matters to
+attend to—matters of very great importance—so that I think I’ll have to
+go.”
+
+“If you must, you must,” said Bessie.  “But I think it’s horrid of your
+partner to make you go back to town this hot weather.”
+
+“Don’t be cross with my partner,” said Thaddeus; “especially my partner
+in this matter.”
+
+“Have you different partners for different matters?” queried Bessie.
+
+“Never mind about that, my dear; you’ll know all about it in time, so
+don’t worry.”
+
+“All right, Teddy.  But I don’t like to have you running away from me
+when I’m at a hotel.  I’d rather be home, anyhow.  Can’t I go with you?
+Little Ted is well enough now to go home.”
+
+“Not this time; but you can go up next Wednesday if you wish,” returned
+Thaddeus, with a slight show of embarrassment.
+
+And so it was settled, and Thaddeus went to town.  On Wednesday they all
+left the sea-shore to return to Phillipseburg.
+
+“Oh, how lovely it looks!” ejaculated Bessie, as she entered the house,
+Norah having opened the door.  “But—er—where’s Jane, Norah?”
+
+“Cookin’ the dinner, mim.”
+
+“Why, Jane can’t cook.”
+
+“If you please, mim, this is a new Jane.”
+
+Bessie’s parasol fell to the floor.  “A wha-a-at?” she cried.
+
+“A new Jane.  Misther Perkins has dispinsed with old Jane and Ellen,
+mim.”
+
+Bessie rushed up-stairs to her room and cried.  The shock was too sudden.
+She longed for Thaddeus, who had remained at the station collecting the
+bath-tubs and other luxuries of the baby from the luggage-van, to come.
+What did it all mean?  Jane and Ellen gone!  New girls in their places!
+
+And then Thaddeus came, and made all plain to the little woman, and when
+he was all through she was satisfied.  He had discharged the tyrants, and
+had supplied their places.  The latter was the important business which
+had taken him to town.
+
+“But, Teddy,” Bessie said, with a smile, when she had heard all, “how did
+poor mild little you ever have the courage to face those two women and
+give them their discharge?”
+
+Teddy blushed.  “I didn’t,” he answered, meekly; “I wrote it.”
+
+Five years have passed since then, and all has gone well.  Thaddeus has
+remained free, and, as he proudly observes, domestics now tremble at his
+approach—that is, all except Norah, who remembers him as of old.  Ellen
+and Jane are living together in affluence, having saved their wages for
+nearly the whole of their term of “service.”  Bessie is happy in the
+possession of two fine boys, to whom all her attention—all save a little
+reserved for Thaddeus—is given; and, as for the dubious, auburn-haired,
+and distinctly Celtic Norah, Thaddeus is afraid that she is developing
+into a “treasure.”
+
+“Why do you think so?” Bessie asked him, when he first expressed that
+fear.
+
+“Oh, she has the symptoms,” returned Thaddeus.  “She has taken three
+nights off this week.”
+
+
+
+
+MR. BRADLEY’S JEWEL
+
+
+THADDEUS was tired, and, therefore, Thaddeus was grumpy.  One premise
+only was necessary for the conclusion—in fact, it was the only premise
+upon which a conclusion involving Thaddeus’s grumpiness could find a
+foothold.  If Thaddeus felt rested, everything in the world could go
+wrong and he would smile as sweetly as ever; but with the slightest trace
+of weariness in his system the smile would fade, wrinkles would gather on
+his forehead, and grumpiness set in whether things were right or wrong.
+On this special occasion to which I refer, things were just wrong enough
+to give him a decent excuse—outside of his weariness—for his irritation.
+Norah, the housemaid, had officiously undertaken to cover up the
+shortcomings of John, who should have blacked Thaddeus’s boots, and who
+had taken his day off without preparing the extra pair which the lord of
+the manor had expected to wear that evening.  It was nice of the
+housemaid, of course, to try to black the extra pair to keep John out of
+trouble, but she might have been more discriminating.  It was not
+necessary for her to polish, until they shone like Claude Lorraine
+glasses, two right boots, one of which, paradoxical as it may seem, was
+consequently the wrong boot; so that when Thaddeus came to dress for the
+evening’s diversion there was nowhere to be found in his shoe-box a bit
+of leathern gear in which his left foot might appear in polite society to
+advantage.  Possibly Thaddeus might have endured the pain of a right boot
+on a left foot, had not Norah unfortunately chosen for that member a
+box-toed boot, while for the right she had selected one with a very
+decided acute angle at its toe-end.
+
+“Just like a woman!” ejaculated Thaddeus, angrily.
+
+“Yes,” returned Bessie, missing Thaddeus’s point slightly.  “It was very
+thoughtful of Norah to look after John’s work, knowing how important it
+was to you.”
+
+Fortunately Thaddeus was out of breath trying to shine up the other
+pointed-toe shoe, so that his only reply to this was a look, which
+Bessie, absorbed as she was in putting the studs in Thaddeus’s shirt, did
+not see.  If she had seen it, I doubt if she would have been so entirely
+happy as the tender little song she was humming softly to herself seemed
+to indicate that she was.
+
+“Some people are born lucky!” growled Thaddeus, as he finished rubbing up
+the left boot, giving it a satin finish which hardly matched the luminous
+brilliance of its mate, though he said it would do.  “There’s Bradley,
+now; he never has any domestic woes of this sort, and he pays just half
+what we do for his servants.”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Bradley.  I don’t like him!” ejaculated Bessie.  “You are always
+talking about Mr. Bradley, as if he had an automaton for a servant.”
+
+“No, I don’t say he has an automaton,” returned Thaddeus.  “Automatons
+don’t often work, and Bradley’s jewel does.  Her name is Mary, but
+Bradley always calls her his jewel.”
+
+“I’ve heard of jewels,” said Bessie, thinking of the two Thaddeus and she
+had begun their married life with, “but they’ve always seemed to me to be
+paste emeralds—awfully green, and not worth much.”
+
+“There’s no paste emerald about Bradley’s girl,” said Thaddeus.  “Why, he
+says that woman has been in Mrs. Bradley’s employ for seven weeks now,
+and she hasn’t broken a bit of china; never sweeps dust under the beds or
+bureaus; keeps the silver polished so that it looks as if it were solid;
+gets up at six every morning; cooks well; is civil, sober, industrious;
+has no hangers-on—”
+
+“Is Mr. Bradley a realist or a romancer?” asked Bessie.
+
+“Why do you ask that?” replied Thaddeus.
+
+“That jewel story sounds like an _Arabian Nights_ tale,” said Bessie.  “I
+don’t believe that it is more than half true, and that half is
+exaggerated.”
+
+“Well, it _is_ true,” said Thaddeus.  “And, what is more, the girl helps
+in the washing, plays with the children, and on her days out she stays at
+home and does sewing.”
+
+Bessie laughed.  “She must be a regular Koh-i-noor,” she said.  “I
+suppose Mr. Bradley pays her a thousand dollars a month.”
+
+“No, he doesn’t; he pays her twelve,” said Thaddeus.
+
+“Then he is just what I said he was,” snapped Bessie—“a mean thing.  The
+idea—twelve dollars a month for all that!  Why, if she could prove she
+was all that you say she is, she could make ten times that amount by
+exhibiting herself.  She is a curiosity.  But if I were Mrs. Bradley I
+wouldn’t have her in the house.  So many virtues piled one on the other
+are sure to make an unsafe structure, and I believe some poor, miserable
+little vice will crop out somewhere and upset the whole thing.”
+
+“You are jealous,” said Thaddeus; and then he went out.
+
+The next day, meeting his friend Bradley on the street, Thaddeus greeted
+him with a smile, and said, “Mrs. Perkins thinks you ought to take up
+literature.”
+
+“Why so?” asked Bradley.
+
+“She thinks De Foe and Scott and Dumas and Stevenson would be thrown into
+the depths of oblivion if you were to write up that jewel of yours,” said
+Thaddeus.  “She thinks your Mary is one of the finest, most imaginative
+creations of modern days.”
+
+“She doubts her existence, eh?” smiled Bradley.
+
+“Well, she thinks she’s more likely to be a myth than a Smith,” said
+Thaddeus.  “She told me to ask you if Mary has a twin-sister, and to say
+that if you hear of her having any relatives at all—and no domestic ever
+lived who hadn’t—to send her their addresses.  She’d like to employ a
+few.”
+
+“I am sorry Mrs. Perkins is so blinded by jealousy,” said Bradley, with a
+smile.  “And I regret to say that Mary hasn’t a cousin on the whole
+police force, or, in fact, any kind of a relative whatsoever, unless she
+prevaricates.”
+
+“Too bad,” said Thaddeus.  “I had a vague hope we could stock up on
+jewels of her kind.  Where did you get her, anyhow—Tiffany’s?”
+
+“No.  At an unintelligence office,” said Bradley.  “She was a last
+resort.  We had to have some one, and she was the only girl there.  We
+took her for a week on trial without references, and, by Jove! she turned
+out a wonder.”
+
+Thaddeus grinned, and said: “Give her time, Bradley.  By-the-way, at what
+hours is she on exhibition?  I’d like to see her.”
+
+“Come up to-night and test the truth of what I say,” said Bradley.  “I
+won’t let anybody know you are coming, and you’ll see her just as we see
+her.  What do you say?”
+
+The temptation was too strong for Thaddeus to resist, and so it was that
+Bessie received a telegram that afternoon from her beloved, stating that
+he would dine with Bradley, and return home on a late train.  The
+telegram concluded with the line, “_I’m going to appraise the escaped
+crown-jewel_.”
+
+Bessie chuckled at this, and stayed up until long after the arrival of
+the last train, so interested was she to hear from Thaddeus all about the
+Bradley jewel, who, as she said, “seemed too good to be true”; but she
+was finally forced to retire disappointed and somewhat anxious, for
+Thaddeus did not return home that night.
+
+Somewhere in the neighborhood of eight o’clock the next morning Bessie
+received a second telegram, which read as follows:
+
+“_Do not worry_.  _I am all right_.  _Will be home about nine_, _Have
+breakfast_.”
+
+“Now I wonder what on earth can have kept him?” Bessie said.  “Something
+has happened, I am sure.  Perhaps an accident on the elevated, or maybe—”
+
+She did not finish the sentence, but rushed into the library and snatched
+up the morning paper, scanning its every column in the expectation, if
+not hope, of finding that some horrible disaster had occurred, in which
+her Thaddeus might have been involved.  The paper disclosed nothing of
+the sort.  Only a few commonplace murders, the usual assortment of
+defalcations, baseball prophecies, and political prognostications could
+Bessie discover therein.  Never, in fact, had the newspaper seemed so
+uninteresting—not even a bargain-counter announcement was there—and with
+an impatient, petulant stamp of her little foot she threw the journal
+from her and returned to the dining-room.  It was then half-past eight,
+and, hardly able to contain herself with excitement, Bessie sat down by
+the window, and almost, if not quite, counted every swing of the pendulum
+that pushed the hands of the clock on to the desired hour.  She could not
+eat, and not until curiosity was gratified as to what it was that had
+detained Thaddeus, and that, more singular still, was bringing him home
+instead of sending him to business at nine o’clock in the morning, could
+she, in fact, do anything?
+
+Finally, the grinding sounds of carriage wheels on the gravel road
+without were heard, and in an instant Bessie was at the door to welcome
+the prodigal.  And what a Thaddeus it was that came home that morning!
+His eyes showed conclusively that he had had no sleep, save the more or
+less unsatisfactory napping which suburban residents get on the trains.
+His beautiful pearl-gray scarf, that so became him when he left home the
+previous morning, was not anywhere in sight.  His cheek was scratched,
+and every button that his vest had ever known had taken wings unto itself
+and flown, Bessie knew not whither.  And yet, tired out as he was,
+dishevelled as he was, Thaddeus was not grumpy, but inclined rather to
+explosive laughter as he entered the house.
+
+“Why, Thaddeus!” cried Bessie, in alarm.  “What on earth is the matter
+with you?  You look as if you had been in a riot.”
+
+“That’s a pretty good guess, my dear,” returned Thaddeus, with a laugh,
+“but not quite the right one.”
+
+“But tell me, what have you been doing?  Where have you been?”
+
+“At Bradley’s, my love.”
+
+“You haven’t been—been quarrelling with Mr. Bradley?”
+
+“No.  Bradley’s jewel has proved your husband’s Waterloo, as well as the
+Sedan of Bradley himself,” returned Thaddeus, throwing his head back and
+bursting out into a loud guffaw.
+
+“I am not good at riddles, Thaddeus,” said Bessie, “and I haven’t laughed
+much myself since that last train came in last night and didn’t bring
+you.  I think you might tell me—”
+
+“Why, my dear little girl,” said Thaddeus, walking to her side and
+kissing her, “I didn’t mean to keep you in suspense, and of course I’ll
+tell you.”
+
+Then, as they ate their breakfast, Thaddeus explained.  “I told Bradley
+that you were a sceptic on the subject of his jewel,” he said, “and he
+offered to prove that she was eighteen carats fine by taking me home with
+him, an unexpected guest, by which act he would test her value to my
+satisfaction.  Of course, having cast doubts upon her excellence, I had
+to accept, and at half-past five he and I boarded an elevated train for
+Harlem.  At six we stood before Bradley’s front door, and as he had left
+his keys at the office, he rang the bell and waited.  It was a long wait,
+considering the presence of a jewel within doors.  It must have lasted
+fifteen minutes, and even that would have been but the beginning, in
+spite of repeated and continuous pulling of the bell-handle, had we not
+determined to enter through the reception-room window.”
+
+“Did you try the basement door?” queried Bessie, with a smile, for it
+pleased her to hear that the jewel was not quite flawless.
+
+“Yes,” said Thaddeus.  “We rang four times at the basement, and I should
+say seven times at the front door, and then we took to the window.
+Bradley’s is one of those narrow English-basement houses with a small
+yard in front, so that the reception-room window is easy to reach by
+climbing over the vault leading to the basement door, which is more or
+less of a cellar entrance.  Fortunately the window was unlocked.  I say
+fortunately, because it enabled us to get into the house, though if I
+were sitting on a jury I think I should base an indictment—one of
+criminal negligence—of the Jewel on the fact that it was unlocked.  It
+was just the hour, you know, when policemen yawn and sneak-thieves
+prowl.”
+
+“How careless!” vouchsafed Bessie.
+
+“Very,” said Thaddeus.  “But this time it worked for the good of all
+concerned, although my personal appearance doesn’t give any indication
+that I gained anything by it.  In fact, it would have been better for me
+if the house had been hermetically sealed.”
+
+“Don’t dally so much, Thaddeus,” put in Bessie.  “I’m anxious to hear
+what happened.”
+
+“Well, of course Bradley was very much concerned,” continued Thaddeus.
+“It was bad enough not to be able to attract the maid’s attention by
+ringing, but when he noticed that the house was as dark as pitch, and
+that despite the clanging of the bell, which could be heard all over the
+neighborhood, even his wife didn’t come to the door, he was worried; and
+he was more worried than ever when he got inside.  We lit the gas in the
+hall, and walked back into the dining-room, where we also lighted up, and
+such confusion as was there you never saw!  The table-cloth was in a heap
+on the floor; Bradley’s candelabra, of which he was always so proud, were
+bent and twisted out of shape under the table; glasses broken beyond
+redemption were strewn round about; and a mixture of pepper, salt, and
+sugar was over everything.”
+
+“‘I believe there have been thieves here,’ said Bradley, his face turning
+white.  And then he went to the foot of the stairs and called up to his
+wife, but there no answer.
+
+“Then he started on a dead run up the stair.  Above all was in confusion,
+as in the dining-room.  Vases were broken, pictures hung awry on the
+walls; but nowhere was Mrs. Bradley or one of the Bradley children to be
+seen.
+
+“Then we began a systematic search of the house.  Everywhere everything
+was upside-down, and finally we came to a door on the third story back,
+leading into the children’s play-room, and as we turned the knob and
+tried to open it we heard Mrs. Bradley’s voice from within.
+
+“‘Who’s there?’ she said, her voice all of a tremble.
+
+“‘It is I!’ returned Bradley.  ‘Open the door.  What is the meaning of
+all this?’
+
+“‘Oh, I’m so glad you have come!’ returned Mrs. Bradley, with a sob, and
+then we heard sounds as of the moving of heavy furniture.  Mrs. Bradley,
+for some as yet unexplained reason, seemed to have barricaded herself in.
+
+“Finally the door was opened, and Mrs. Bradley buried her face on her
+husband’s shoulder and sobbed hysterically.
+
+“‘What on earth is the matter?’ asked Bradley, as his children followed
+their mother’s lead, except that they buried their faces in his coat-tail
+pockets.  ‘What has happened?’
+
+“‘Mary!’ gasped Mrs. Bradley.”
+
+“The jewel?” asked Bessie.
+
+“The same,” returned Thaddeus, with a smile.  “She was the jewel, alas!
+now deprived of her former glorious setting.
+
+“‘What’s the matter with Mary?’ asked Bradley.
+
+“‘She’s been behaving outrageously.  I found her this morning,’ said Mrs.
+Bradley, ‘rummaging through my escritoire, throwing things all over the
+floor; and when I remonstrated she said she was looking for a sheet of
+paper on which to write a letter.  I told her she should have asked me
+for it, and she replied impertinently that she never asked favors of
+anybody.  I told her to leave the room, and she declined to do it,
+picking up a sofa-pillow and throwing it at me.  I was so overcome I
+nearly fainted.’”
+
+“I should think she would have been overcome!  Such impudence!” said
+Bessie.
+
+“Humph!” said Thaddeus.  “That isn’t a marker to what followed.  Why,
+according to Mrs. Bradley’s story, that escaped Koh-i-noor called her all
+sorts of horrible names, threw an empty ink-pot at a photograph of
+Bradley himself, that stood on the mantel, and then, grabbing up a
+whisk-broom, literally swept everything else there was on the mantel off
+to the floor with it.  This done, she began to overturn chairs with an
+ardor born of temper, apparently; and, finally, Mrs. Bradley got so
+frightened that she ran from the room, and the jewel started in pursuit.
+Straight to the nursery ran the lady of the house—for there was where the
+children were, playing house, no doubt, with little idea that jewels
+sometimes deteriorated.  Once in the nursery, Mrs. Bradley slammed the
+door to, locked it, and then, still fearful, rolled before it the bureau
+and the children’s cribs.  After that the actions of the jewel could only
+be surmised.  The door was pounded and the atmosphere of the hall was
+rent with violent harangues; then a hurried step was heard as the jewel
+presumably sailed below-stairs; then crashings were heard—crashings which
+might have indicated the smashing of windows, of picture-glass, of
+mirrors, chairs, and other household appurtenances, after which, Mrs.
+Bradley observed, all became still.”
+
+“Mercy! what a trial!” said Bessie.
+
+“And was she locked up in the nursery all day?”
+
+“From twelve until we rescued her at a little after six,” said Thaddeus.
+“Then Bradley and I started out to find the jewel, if possible, and I
+regret to say that it was possible.  We found her asleep on the kitchen
+table, and Bradley hadn’t any more sense than to try and wake her up.  He
+succeeded too well.  For the next ten minutes she was the most wide-awake
+woman you ever saw, and she kept us wide awake too.  The minute she
+opened her eyes and saw us standing before her, she sprang to her feet
+and made a rush at Bradley, for which he was totally unprepared, the
+consequence of which was that in an instant he found himself sitting in a
+very undignified manner, for the head of the house, on the kitchen floor,
+trying to collect his somewhat scattered faculties.
+
+“When she had persuaded Bradley to take a seat, she turned to shower her
+attentions on me.  I jumped to one side, but she managed to grab hold of
+my vest, and hence its buttonless condition.  By this time Bradley was on
+his feet again, and, having had the temerity to face his jewel the second
+time, he again came off second best, losing one of the button-holes of
+his collar in the mêlée.  I rushed in from behind, and flirtatiously,
+perhaps, tried to grab hold of her hands, coming off the field minus a
+necktie, but plus that picturesque scratch you see on my nose.  Stopping
+a moment to count up my profit and loss, I let Bradley make the next
+assault, which resulted in a drawn battle, Bradley losing his watch and
+his temper, the jewel losing her breath and her balance.  So it went on
+for probably three or four minutes longer, though we certainly acquired
+several years of experience in those short minutes, until finally we
+managed to conquer her.  This done, we locked her up in a closet.”
+
+“Had she been at the cooking-sherry?” asked Bessie.
+
+“We thought so at first, and Bradley sent for a policeman,” said Thaddeus
+“but when he came we found the poor creature too exhausted to be moved,
+and in a very short while Mrs. Bradley decided that it was a case for a
+doctor and not for a police-justice.  So the doctor was summoned, and we
+waited, dinnerless, in the dining-room for his verdict, and finally it
+came.  _Bradley’s jewel was insane_!”
+
+“Insane!” echoed Bessie.
+
+“Mad as a hatter,” replied Thaddeus.
+
+“Well, I declare!” said Bessie, thoughtfully.  “But, Thaddeus, do you
+know I am not surprised.”
+
+“Why, my dear?” he asked.
+
+“Because, Teddy, she was too perfect to be in her right mind.”
+
+And Thaddeus, after thinking it all over, was inclined to believe that
+Bessie was in the right.
+
+“Yes, Bess, she was perfect—perfect in the way she did her work, perfect
+in the way she smashed things, and nowhere did she more successfully show
+the thoroughness with which she did everything than when it came to
+removing the buttons from my vest.  Isn’t it too bad that the only
+perfect servant that ever lived should turn out to be a hopeless maniac?
+But I must hurry off, or I’ll miss my train.”
+
+“You are not going down to town to-day?” asked Bessie.
+
+“To-day, above all other days, am I going down,” returned Thaddeus.  “I
+am enough of a barbarian to be unwilling to lose the chance of seeing
+Bradley, and asking him how he and his jewel get along.”
+
+“Thaddeus!”
+
+“Why not, my dear?”
+
+“It would be too mean for anything.”
+
+“Well, perhaps you are right.  I guess I won’t.  But he has rubbed it
+into me so much about our domestics that I hate to lose the chance to hit
+back.”
+
+“Has he?” said Bessie, her face flushing indignantly, and, it may be
+added, becomingly.  “In that case, perhaps, you might—ha! ha!—perhaps you
+might telegraph and ask him.”
+
+And Thaddeus did so.  As yet he has received no reply.
+
+
+
+
+UNEXPECTED POMP AT THE PERKINS’S
+
+
+“MY dear,” said Thaddeus, one night, as he and Mrs. Perkins entered the
+library after dinner, “that was a very good dinner to-night.  Don’t you
+think so?”
+
+“All except the salmon,” said Bessie, with a smile.
+
+“Salmon?” echoed Thaddeus.  “Salmon?  I did not see any salmon.”
+
+“No,” said Bessie, “that was just the trouble.  It didn’t come up,
+although it was in the house before dinner, I’m certain.  I saw it
+arrive.”
+
+“Ellen couldn’t have known you intended it for dinner,” said Thaddeus.
+
+“Yes, she knew it was for dinner,” returned Bessie, “but she made a
+mistake as to whose dinner it was for.  She supposed it was bought for
+the kitchen-table, and when I went down-stairs to inquire about it a few
+minutes ago it was fulfilling its assumed mission nobly.  There wasn’t
+much left but the tail and one fin.”
+
+“Well!” ejaculated Thaddeus, “I call that a pretty cool proceeding.  Did
+you give her a talking to?”
+
+“No,” Bessie replied, shortly; “I despise a domestic fuss, so I pretended
+I’d gone down to talk about breakfast.  We’ll have breakfast an hour or
+two earlier to-morrow, dear.”
+
+“What’s that for?” queried Thaddeus, his eyes open wide with
+astonishment.  “You are not going shopping, are you?”
+
+“No, Teddy, I’m not; but when I got down-stairs and realized that Ellen
+had made the natural mistake of supposing the fish was for the
+down-stairs dinner, this being Friday, I had to think of something to
+say, and nothing would come except that we wanted breakfast at seven
+instead of at eight.  It doesn’t do to have servants suspect you of
+spying upon them, nor is it wise ever to appear flustered—so mamma
+says—in their presence.  I avoided both by making Ellen believe I’d come
+down to order an early breakfast.”
+
+“You are a great Bessie,” said Thaddeus, with a laugh.  “I admire you
+more than ever, my dear, and to prove it I’d get up to breakfast if you’d
+ordered it at 1 A.M.”
+
+“You’d be more likely to stay up to it,” said Bessie, “and then go to bed
+after it.”
+
+“There’s your Napoleonic mind again,” said Thaddeus.  “I should never
+have thought of that way out of it.  But, Bess,” he continued, “when I
+was praising to-night’s dinner I had a special object in view.  I think
+Ellen cooks well enough now to warrant us in giving a dinner, don’t you?”
+
+“Well, it all depends on what we have for dinner,” said Bessie.  “Ellen’s
+biscuits are atrocious, I think, and you know how lumpy the oatmeal
+always is.”
+
+“Suppose we try giving a dinner with the oatmeal and biscuit courses left
+out?” suggested Thaddeus, with a grin.
+
+Bessie’s eyes twinkled.  “You make very bright after-dinner speeches,
+Teddy,” she said.  “I don’t see why we can’t have a dinner with nothing
+but pretty china, your sparkling conversation, and a few flowers strewn
+about.  It would be particularly satisfactory to me.”
+
+“They’re not all angels like you, my dear,” Thaddeus returned.  “There’s
+Bradley, for instance.  He’d die of starvation before we got to the
+second course in a dinner of that kind, and if there is any one thing
+that can cast a gloom over a dinner, it is to have one of the guests die
+of starvation right in the middle of it.”
+
+“Mr. Bradley would never do so ungentlemanly a thing,” said Bessie,
+laughing heartily.  “He is too considerate a man for that; he’d starve in
+silence and without ostentation.”
+
+“Why this sudden access of confidence in Bradley?” queried Thaddeus.  “I
+thought you didn’t like him?”
+
+“Neither I did, until that Sunday he spent with us,” Bessie answered.
+“I’ve admired him intensely ever since.  Don’t you remember, we had lemon
+pie for dinner—one I made myself?”
+
+“Yes, I remember,” said Thaddeus; “but I fail to see the connection
+between lemon pie and Bradley.  Bradley is not sour or crusty.”
+
+“You wouldn’t have failed to see if you’d watched Mr. Bradley at dinner,”
+retorted Bessie.  “He ate two pieces of it.”
+
+“And just because a man eats two pieces of lemon pie prepared by your own
+fair hands you whirl about, and, from utterly disliking him, call him,
+upon the whole, one of the most admirable products of the human race?”
+said Thaddeus.
+
+“Not at all,” Bessie replied, with a broad smile; “but I did admire the
+spirit and politeness of the man.  On our way home from church in the
+morning we were talking about the good times children have on their
+little picnics, and Mr. Bradley said he never enjoyed a picnic in his
+life, because every one he had ever gone to was ruined by the baleful
+influence of lemon pie.”
+
+Thaddeus laughed.  “Then he didn’t like lemon pie?” he asked.
+
+“No, he hated it,” said Bessie, joining in the laugh.  “He added that the
+original receipt for it came out of Pandora’s box.”
+
+“Poor Bradley!” cried Thaddeus, throwing his head back in a paroxysm of
+mirth.  “Hated pie—declared his feelings—and then to be confronted by it
+at dinner.”
+
+“He behaved nobly,” said Bessie.  “Ate his first piece like a man, and
+then called for a second, like a hero, when you remarked that it was of
+my make.”
+
+“You ought to have told him it wasn’t necessary, Bess,” said Thaddeus.
+
+“I felt that way myself at first,” Bessie explained; “but then I thought
+I wouldn’t let him know I remembered what he had said.”
+
+“I fancy that was better,” said Thaddeus.  “But about that dinner.  What
+do you say to our inviting the Bradleys, Mr. and Mrs. Phillips, the
+Robinsons, and the Twinings?”
+
+“How many does that make?  Eight besides ourselves?” asked Bessie,
+counting upon her fingers.
+
+“Yes—ten altogether,” said Thaddeus.
+
+“It can’t be done, dear,” said Bessie.  “We have only eight fruit
+plates.”
+
+“Can’t you and I go without fruit?” Thaddeus asked.
+
+“Not very well,” laughed Bessie.  “It would never do.”
+
+“They might think the fruit was poisoned if we did, eh?” suggested
+Thaddeus.
+
+“Besides, Mary never could serve dinner for ten; eight is her number.
+Last time we had ten people, don’t you remember, she dropped a tray full
+of dishes, and poured the claret into the champagne glasses?”
+
+“Oh, yes, so she did,” said Thaddeus.  “That’s how we came to have only
+eight fruit plates.  I remember.  I don’t think it was the number of
+people at the table, though.  It was Twining caused the trouble, he had
+just made the pleasant remark that he wouldn’t have an Irish servant in
+his house, when Mary fired the salute.”
+
+“Then that settles it,” said Bessie.  “We’ll cut the Twinings out, and
+ask the others.  I don’t care much for Mrs. Twining, anyhow; she’s
+nothing but clothes and fidgets.”
+
+“And Twining doesn’t do much but ask you what you think of certain
+things, and then tell you you are all wrong when he finds out,” said
+Thaddeus.  “Yes, it’s just as well to cut them off this time.  We’ll make
+it for eight, and have it a week from Thursday night.”
+
+“That’s Mary’s night off,” said Bessie.
+
+“Then how about having it Friday?”
+
+“That’s Maggie’s night off, and there won’t be anybody to mind the baby.”
+
+“Humph!” said Thaddeus.  “I wish there were a baby safe-deposit company
+somewhere.  Can’t your mother come over and look after him?”
+
+“No,” said Bessie, “she can’t.  The child always develops something every
+time mother comes.  Not, of course, that I believe she gives it to him,
+but she looks for things, don’t you know.”
+
+“Yes,” said Thaddeus, “I know.  Then make it Wednesday.  That’s my busy
+day down-town, and I shan’t be able to get home much before half-past
+six, but if dinner is at seven, there will be time enough for me to
+dress.”
+
+“Very well,” said Bessie.  “I will write the invitations to-morrow, and,
+meanwhile, you and I can get up the menu.”
+
+“Oysters to begin with, of course,” said Thaddeus.
+
+“I suppose so,” said Bessie, “though, you remember, the last time we had
+oysters you had to open them, because the man from the market didn’t get
+here until half-past seven.”
+
+“And Ellen had never opened any except with a tack-hammer,” said
+Thaddeus.  “Yes, I remember.  But lightning never strikes twice in the
+same place.  Put down the oysters.  Then we’ll have some kind of a
+purée—celery purée, eh?”
+
+“That will be very good if Ellen can be induced to keep it thick.”
+
+“Perhaps we’d better tell her we want a celery consommé,” suggested
+Thaddeus.  “Then it will be sure to be as thick as a dictionary.”
+
+“I guess it will be all right,” said Bessie.  “What kind of fish?”
+
+“Bradley likes salmon; Robinson likes sole; Phillips likes whitebait, and
+so do I.”
+
+“We’ll have whitebait,” said Bessie, simply.  “Then a saddle of mutton?”
+
+“Yes, and an entrée of some kind, and next individual ruddy ducks.”
+
+“No Roman punch?”
+
+“We can get along without that, I think,” said Thaddeus.  “We want to
+keep this dinner down to Mary’s comprehension, and I’m afraid she
+wouldn’t know what to make of an ice in the middle of the dinner.  The
+chances are she’d want to serve it hot.”
+
+“All right, Teddy.  What next?”
+
+“I would suggest a lemon pie for Bradley,” smiled Thaddeus.
+
+“What do you say to Ellen’s making one of her tipsy-cakes?” suggested
+Bessie.
+
+“Just the thing,” said Thaddeus, smacking his lips with enthusiasm.  “I
+could eat a million of ’em.  Then we can finish up with coffee and
+fruit.”
+
+So it was settled.  The invitations were sent out, and Bessie devoted her
+energies for the next ten days to making ready.
+
+Ellen’s culinary powers were tested at every meal.  For dinner one night
+she was requested to prepare the purée, which turned out to be eminently
+satisfactory.  Thaddeus gave her a few practical lessons in the art of
+opening oysters, an art of which he had become a master in his college
+days—in fact, if his own words were to be believed, it was the sole
+accomplishment he had there acquired which gave any significance whatever
+to his degree of B. A.—so that in case the “fish gentleman” failed to
+appear in time nothing disastrous might result.  Other things on the menu
+were also ordered at various times, and all went so well that when
+Thaddeus left home on the chosen Wednesday morning, it was with a serene
+sense of good times ahead.  The invited guests had accepted, and
+everything was promising.
+
+As Thaddeus had said, Wednesday was his busy day, and never had it been
+busier than upon this occasion.  Everything moved smoothly, but there was
+a great deal to move, and finally, when all was done, and Thaddeus rose
+to leave his desk, it was nearly six o’clock, and quite impossible for
+him to reach home before seven.  “I shall be late,” he said, as he
+hurried off; and he was right.  He arrived at home coincidently with his
+guests, rushed to his room, and dressed.  But one glimpse had he of
+Bessie, and that was as they passed on the stairs, she hurrying down to
+receive her guests, he hurrying up to change his clothes.
+
+“Oh, Thad!” was all she said, but to Thaddeus it was disconcerting.
+
+“What is the matter, dear?” he asked.
+
+“Nothing; I’ll tell you later.  Hurry,” she gasped, “or the dinner will
+be spoiled.”
+
+Thaddeus hurried as he never hurried before, and in fifteen minutes
+walked, immaculate as to attire, into the drawing-room, where Bessie, her
+color heightened to an unusual degree, and her usually bright eyes fairly
+flaming with an unwonted brilliance, was entertaining the Bradleys, the
+Phillipses, and the Robinsons.
+
+“Didn’t expect me, did you?” said Thaddeus, as he entered the room.
+
+“No,” said Bradley, dryly.  “This is an unexpected pleasure.  I didn’t
+even know you were a friend of the family.”
+
+“Well, I am,” said Thaddeus.  “One of the oldest friends I’ve got, in
+fact, which is my sole excuse for keeping you waiting.  Old friends are
+privileged—eh, Mrs. Robinson?”
+
+“Dinner is served,” came a deep bass voice from the middle of the
+doorway.
+
+Thaddeus jumped as if he had seen a ghost, and, turning to see what could
+have caused the strange metamorphosis in the soprano tremolo of Mary’s
+voice, was astonished to observe in the parting of the portières not the
+more or less portly Mary, but a huge, burly, English-looking man, bowing
+in a most effective and graceful fashion to Mrs. Bradley, and then
+straightening himself up into a pose as rigid and uncompromising as that
+of a marble statue.
+
+“What on earth—” began Thaddeus, with a startled look of inquiry at
+Bessie.  But she only shook her head, and put her finger to her lips,
+enjoining silence, which Thaddeus, fortunately, had the good sense to
+understand, even if his mind was not equal to the fathoming of that other
+mystery, the pompous and totally unexpected butler.
+
+But if Thaddeus was surprised to see the butler, he was amazed at the
+dinner which the butler served.  Surely, he thought, if Ellen can prepare
+a dinner like this, she ought to be above taking sixteen dollars and a
+home a month.  It was simply a regal repast.  The oysters were delicious,
+and the purée was superior to anything Thaddeus had ever eaten in the
+line of soups in his life—only it was lobster purée, and ten times better
+than Ellen’s general run of celery purée.  He winked his eye to denote
+his extreme satisfaction to Bessie when he thought no one was looking,
+but was overwhelmed with mortification when he observed that the wink had
+been seen by the overpowering butler, who looked sternly at him, as much
+as to say, “’Ow wery wulgar!”
+
+“I must congratulate your cook upon her lobster purée, Mrs. Perkins,”
+said Mr. Phillips.  “It is delicious.”
+
+“Yes,” put in Thaddeus.  “But you ought to taste her celery purée.  She
+is undoubtedly great on purées.”
+
+Bessie coughed slightly and shook her head at Thaddeus, and Thaddeus
+thought he detected the germ of a smile upon the cold face of the butler.
+He was not sure about it, but it curdled his blood just a little, because
+that ghost of a smile seemed to have just a tinge of a sneer in it.
+
+“This isn’t the same cook you had last time, is it?” asked Bradley.
+
+“Yes,” said Thaddeus.  “Same one, though it was my wife who made that
+lem—”
+
+“Thaddeus,” interrupted Bessie, “Mrs. Robinson tells me that she and Mr.
+Robinson are going down to New York to the theatre on Friday night.
+Can’t we all go?”
+
+“Certainly,” said Thaddeus.  “I’m in on any little diversion of that
+sort.  Why, what’s this?—er—why, yes, of course.  Phillips, you’ll go;
+and you, too, eh, Bradley?”
+
+Thaddeus was evidently much upset again; for, instead of the whitebait he
+and Bessie had decided upon for their fish course, the butler had
+entered, bearing in a toplofty fashion a huge silver platter, upon which
+lay a superb salmon, beautifully cooked and garnished.  This he was now
+holding before Thaddeus, and stood awaiting his nod of approval before
+serving it.  Inasmuch as Thaddeus not only expected whitebait, but had
+also never before seen the silver platter, it is hardly surprising that
+he should sit staring at the fish in a puzzled sort of way.  He recovered
+shortly, however, gave the nod the butler was waiting for, and the dinner
+proceeded.  And what a dinner it was!  Each new course in turn amazed
+Thaddeus far more than the course that had preceded it; and now, when the
+butler, whom Thaddeus had got more or less used to, came in bearing a
+bottle of wine, followed by another stolid, well-dressed person, who
+might have been his twin-brother and who was in reality no more than
+assistant to the other, Thaddeus began to fear that the wine he had
+partaken of had brought about that duplication of sight which is said to
+be one of the symptoms of over-indulgence.  Either that or he was
+dreaming, he thought; and the alternative was not a pleasant one, for
+Thaddeus did not over-indulge, and as a person of intellect he did not
+deem it the proper thing to dream at the dinner-table, since the first
+requisite of dreaming is falling asleep.  This Thaddeus never did in
+polite society.
+
+To say that he could scarcely contain himself for curiosity to know what
+had occurred to bring about this singular condition of affairs is to put
+it with a mildness which justice to Thaddeus compels me to term criminal.
+Yet, to his credit be it said, that through the whole of the repast,
+which lasted for two hours, he kept silent, and but for a slight
+nervousness of manner no one would have suspected that he was not as he
+had always been.  Indeed, to none of the party, not even excepting his
+wife, did Thaddeus appear to be anything but what he should be.  But
+when, finally, the ladies had withdrawn and the men remained over the
+coffee and cigars, he was compelled to undergo a still severer test upon
+his loyalty to Bessie, whose signal to him to accept all and say nothing
+he was so nobly obeying.
+
+Bradley began it.  “I didn’t know you’d changed from women to men
+servants, Perkins?”
+
+“_Yes_,” said Thaddeus “we’ve changed.”
+
+“Rather good change, don’t you think?”
+
+“Splendid,” said Phillips.  “That fellow served the dinner like a
+prince.”
+
+“I don’t believe he’s any more than a duke, though,” said Bradley.  “His
+manner was quite ducal—in fact, too ducal, if Perkins will let me
+criticise.  He made me feel like a poor, miserable, red-blooded son of
+the people.  I wanted an olive, and, by Jove, I didn’t dare ask for it.”
+
+“That wasn’t his fault,” said Robinson, with a laugh.  “You forget that
+you live in a country where red blood is as good as blue.  Where did you
+get him, Thaddeus?”
+
+Thaddeus looked like a rat in a corner with a row of cats to the fore.
+
+“Oh!—we—er—we got him from—dear me!  I never can remember.  Mrs. Perkins
+can tell you, though,” he stammered.  “She looks after the menagerie.”
+
+“What’s his name?” asked Phillips.
+
+Thaddeus’s mind was a blank.  He could not for the life of him think what
+name a butler would be likely to have, but in a moment he summoned up
+nerve enough to speak.
+
+“Grimmins,” he said, desperately.
+
+“Sounds like a Dickens’ character,” said Robinson.  “Does he cost you
+very much, Thad?”
+
+“Oh no—not so very much,” said Thaddeus, whose case was now so desperate
+that he resolved to put a stop to it all.  Unfortunately, his method of
+doing so was not by telling the truth, but by a flight of fancy in which
+he felt he owed it to Bessie to indulge.
+
+“No—he doesn’t cost much,” he repeated, boldly.  “Fact is, he is a man
+we’ve known for a great many years.  He—er—he used to be butler in my
+grandfather’s house in Philadelphia, and—er—and I was there a great deal
+of the time as a boy, and Grimmins and I were great friends.  When my
+grandfather died Grimmins disappeared, and until last month I never heard
+a word of him, and then he wrote to me stating that he was out of work
+and poor as a fifty-cent table-d’hôte dinner, and would like employment
+at nominal wages if he could get a home with it.  We were just getting
+rid of our waitress, and so I offered Grimmins thirty a month, board,
+lodging, and clothes.  He came on; I gave him one of my old dress-suits,
+set him to work, and there you are.”
+
+“I thought you said a minute ago Mrs. Perkins got him?” said Bradley, who
+is one of those disagreeable men with a memory.
+
+“I thought you were talking about the cook,” said Thaddeus, uneasily.
+“Weren’t you talking about the cook?”
+
+“No; but we ought to have been,” said Phillips, with enthusiasm.  “She’s
+the queen of cooks.  What do you pay her?”
+
+“Sixteen,” said Thaddeus, glad to get back on the solid ground of truth
+once more.
+
+“What?” cried Phillips.  “Sixteen, and can cook like that?  Take me down
+and introduce me, will you, Perkins?  I’d like to offer her seventeen to
+come and cook for me.”
+
+“Let’s join the ladies,” said Thaddeus, abruptly.  “There’s no use of our
+wasting our sweetness upon each other.”
+
+If the head of the house had expected to be relieved from his unfortunate
+embarrassments by joining the ladies, he was doomed to bitter
+disappointment, for the conversation abandoned at the table was resumed
+in the drawing-room.  The dinner had been too much of a success to be
+forgotten readily.
+
+Thaddeus’s troubles were set going again when he overheard Phillips
+saying to Bessie, “Thaddeus has been telling us the remarkable story of
+Grimmins.”
+
+Nor were his woes lightened any when he caught Bessie’s reply: “Indeed?
+What story is that?”
+
+“Why, the story of the butler—Grimmins, you know.  How you came to get
+him, and all that,” said Phillips.  “Really, you are to be
+congratulated.”
+
+“I am glad to know you feel that way,” said Bessie, simply, with a glance
+at Thaddeus which was full of wonderment.
+
+“He is a treasure,” said Bradley; “but your cook is a whole chestful of
+treasures.  And how fortunate you and Thaddeus are!  The idea of there
+being anywhere in the world a person of such ability in her vocation, and
+so poor a notion of her worth!”
+
+Thaddeus breathed again, now that the cook was under discussion.  He knew
+all about her.
+
+“Yes, indeed,” said Bessie.  “He did well.”
+
+“I mean the cook,” returned Bradley.  “You mean she did well, don’t you?”
+
+What Bessie would have answered, or what Thaddeus would have done next if
+the conversation had been continued, can be a matter of unprofitable
+speculation only, for at this point a wail from above-stairs showed that
+Master Perkins had awakened, and the ladies, considerate of Bessie’s
+maternal feelings, promptly rose to take their leave, and in ten minutes
+she and Thaddeus were alone.
+
+“What on earth is the story of Grimmins, Thaddeus?” she asked, as the
+door closed upon the departing guests.
+
+Thaddeus threw himself wearily down upon the sofa and explained.  He told
+her all he had said about the butler and the cook.
+
+“That’s the story of Grimmins,” he said, when he had finished.
+
+“Oh, dear me, dear me!” cried Bessie, “you told the men that, and I—I,
+Thaddeus, told the women the truth.  Why, it’s—it’s awful.  You’ll never
+hear the end of it.”
+
+“Well, now that they know the truth, Bess,” Thaddeus said, “suppose you
+let me into the secret.  What on earth is the meaning of all this—two
+butlers, silver platters, dinner fit for the gods, and all?”
+
+“It’s all because of the tipsy-cake,” said Bessie.
+
+“The what?” asked Thaddeus, sitting up and gazing at his wife as if he
+questioned her sanity.
+
+“The tipsy-cake,” she repeated.  “I gave Ellen the bottle of brandy you
+gave me for the tipsy-cake, and—and she drank half of it.”
+
+“And the other half?”
+
+“Mary drank that.  They got word this morning that their brother was very
+ill, and it upset them so I don’t believe they knew what they were doing;
+but at one o’clock, when I went down to lunch, there was no lunch ready,
+and when I descended into the kitchen to find out why, I found that the
+fire had gone out, and both girls were—both girls were asleep on the
+cellar floor.  They’re there yet—locked in; and all through dinner I was
+afraid they might come to, and—make a rumpus.”
+
+“And the dinner?” said Thaddeus, a light breaking through into his
+troubled mind.
+
+“I telegraphed to New York to Partinelli at once, telling him to serve a
+dinner for eight here to-night, supplying service, cook, dinner, and
+everything, and at four o’clock these men arrived and took possession.
+It was the only thing I could do, Thad, wasn’t it?”
+
+“It was, Bess,” said Thaddeus, gravely.  “It was great; but—by Jove, I
+wish I’d known, because—Did you really tell the ladies the truth about
+it?”
+
+“Yes, I did,” said Bessie.  “They were so full of praises for everything
+that I didn’t think it was fair for me to take all the credit of it, so I
+told them the whole thing.”
+
+“That was right, too,” said Thaddeus; “but those fellows will never let
+me hear the end of that infernal Grimmins story.  I almost wish we—”
+
+“You wish what, Teddy dear?”
+
+“I almost wish we had not attempted the tipsy-cake, and had stuck to my
+original suggestion,” said Thaddeus.
+
+“What was that?” Bessie asked.
+
+“To have lemon pie for dessert, for Bradley’s sake,” answered Thaddeus,
+as he locked the front door and turned off the gas.
+
+
+
+
+AN OBJECT-LESSON
+
+
+IT was early in the autumn.  Mr. and Mrs. Perkins, with their two
+hopefuls, had returned from a month of rest at the mountains, and the
+question of school for Thaddeus junior came up.
+
+“He is nearly six years old,” said Bessie, “and I think he is quite
+intelligent enough to go to school, don’t you?”
+
+“Well, if you want my honest opinion,” Thaddeus answered, “I think he’s
+intelligent enough to go without school for another year at least.  I
+don’t want a hot-house boy, and I have always been opposed to forcing
+these little minds that we are called upon by circumstances to direct.
+It seems to me that the thing for us to do is to hold them back, if
+anything.  If Teddy goes to school now, he’ll be ready for college when
+he is twelve.  He’ll be graduated at sixteen, and at twenty he’ll be
+practising law.  At twenty-five he’ll be leader of the bar; and then—what
+will there be left for him to achieve at fifty?  Absolutely nothing.”
+
+Mrs. Perkins laughed.  “You have great hopes for Teddy, haven’t you?”
+
+“Certainly I have,” Thaddeus replied; “and why shouldn’t I?  Doesn’t he
+combine all my good qualities plus yours?  How can he be anything else
+than great?”
+
+“I am afraid there’s a touch of vanity in you,” said Mrs. Perkins, with a
+smile.  “That remark certainly indicates it.”
+
+“No—it’s not vanity in me,” said Thaddeus.  “It’s confidence in you.
+You’ve assured me so often of my perfection that I am beginning to
+believe in it; and as for your perfection, I’ve always believed in it.
+Hence, when I see Teddy combining your perfect qualities with my own, I
+regard him as a supernaturally promising person—that is, I do until he
+begins to show the influence of contact with the hired man, and uses
+language which he never got from you or from me.”
+
+“Granting that he is great at twenty-five,” said Mrs. Perkins, after a
+few moments’ reflection, “is that such a horrible thing?”
+
+“It isn’t for the parents of the successful youth, but for the successful
+youth himself it’s something awful,” returned Thaddeus, with a convincing
+shake of the head.  “If no one ever lived beyond the age of thirty-five
+it wouldn’t be so bad, but think of living to be even so young as sixty,
+with a big reputation to sustain through more than half of that period!
+I wouldn’t want to have to sustain a big name for twenty-five years.
+Success entails conspicuousness, and conspicuousness makes error almost a
+crime.  Put your mind on it for a moment.  Think of Teddy here.  How
+nervous it would make him in everything he undertook to feel that the
+eyes of the world were upon him.  And take into consideration that other
+peculiarity of human nature which leads us all, you and me as well as
+every one else, to believe that the man who does not progress is going
+backward, that there is no such thing as standing still; then think of a
+man illustrious enough for seventy at twenty-five—at the limit of
+success, with all those years before him, and no progress possible!  No,
+my dear.  Don’t let’s talk of school for Teddy yet.”
+
+“I am sure I don’t want to force him,” said Mrs. Perkins, “but it
+sometimes seems to me that he needs lessons in discipline.  I can’t be
+following around after him all the time, and it seems to me some days
+that I do nothing but find fault with him.  I don’t want him to think I’m
+a stern mother; and when he tells me, as he did yesterday, that he wishes
+I’d take a vacation for a month, I can’t blame him.”
+
+“Did he tell you that?” asked Thaddeus, with a chuckle.
+
+“Yes, he did,” replied Mrs. Perkins.  “I’d kept him in a chair for an
+hour because he would tease Tommy, and when finally I let him go I told
+him that he was wearing me out with his naughtiness.  About an hour later
+he came back and said, ‘You have an awful hard time bringin’ me up, don’t
+you?’  I said yes, and added that he might spare me the necessity of
+scolding him so often, to which he replied that he’d try, but thought it
+would be better if I’d take a vacation for a month.  He hadn’t much hope
+for his own improvement.”
+
+Thaddeus shook internally.
+
+“He’s perfectly wild, too, at times,” Mrs. Perkins continued.  “He wants
+to do such fearful things.  I caught him sliding down the banisters
+yesterday head-foremost, and you know how he was at the Mountain House
+all summer long.  Perfectly irrepressible.”
+
+“That’s very true,” said Thaddeus.  “I was speaking of it to the doctor
+up there, and asked him what he thought I’d better do.”
+
+“And what did he say?” asked Mrs. Perkins.
+
+“He stated his firm belief that there was nothing you or I could do to
+get him down to a basis, but thought Hagenbeck might accomplish
+something.”
+
+“No doubt he thought that,” cried Bessie.  “No doubt everybody thought
+that, but it wasn’t entirely Teddy’s fault.  If there is anything in the
+world that is well calculated to demoralize an active-minded, able-bodied
+child, it is hotel life.  Teddy was egged on to all sorts of
+indiscretions by everybody in the hotel, from the bell-boys up.  If he’d
+stand on his head on the cashier’s desk, the cashier would laugh first,
+and then, to get rid of him, would suggest that he go into the
+dining-room and play with the headwaiter; and when he upset the contents
+of his bait-box in Mrs. Harkaway’s lap, she interfered when I scolded
+him, and said she liked it.  What can you do when people talk that way?”
+
+“Get him to upset his bait-box in her lap again,” said Thaddeus.  “I
+think if he had been encouraged to do that as a regular thing, every
+morning for a week, she’d have changed her tune.”
+
+“Well, it all goes to prove one thing,” said Mrs. Perkins, “and that is,
+Teddy needs more care than we can give him personally.  We are too
+lenient.  Whenever you start in to punish him it ends up with a game;
+when I do it, and he says something funny, as he always does, I have to
+laugh.”
+
+“How about the ounce-of-prevention idea?” suggested Thaddeus.  “We’ve let
+him go without a nurse for a year now—why can’t we employ a maid to look
+after him—not to boss him, but to keep an eye on him—to advise him, and,
+in case he declines to accept the advice, to communicate with us at once?
+All he needs is directed occupation.  As he is at present, he directs his
+own occupation, with the result that the things he does are of an
+impossible sort.”
+
+“That means another servant for me to manage,” sighed Mrs. Perkins.
+
+“True; but a servant is easier to manage than Teddy.  You can discharge a
+servant if she becomes impossible.  We’ve got Teddy for keeps,” said
+Thaddeus.
+
+“Very well—so be it,” said Mrs. Perkins.  “You are right, I guess, about
+school.  He ought not to be forced, and I’d be worried about him all the
+time he was away, anyhow.”
+
+So it was decided that Teddy should have a nurse, and for a day or two
+the subject was dropped.  Later on Mrs. Perkins reopened it.
+
+“I’ve been thinking all day about Teddy’s nurse, Thaddeus,” she said, one
+evening after dinner.  “I think it would be nice if we got him a French
+nurse.  Then he could learn French without any forcing.”
+
+“Good scheme,” said Thaddeus.  “I approve of that.  We might learn a
+little French from her ourselves, too.”
+
+“That’s what I thought,” said Bessie and that point was decided.  The new
+nurse was to be French, and the happy parents drew beatific visions of
+the ease with which they should some day cope with Parisian hotel-keepers
+and others in that longed-for period when they should find themselves
+able, financially, to visit the French capital.
+
+But—
+
+Ah!  Those buts that come into our lives!  Conjunctions they are called!
+Are they not rather terminals?  Are they not the forerunners of chaos in
+the best-laid plans of mankind?  If for every “but” that destroys our
+plan of action there were ready always some better-succeeding plan, then
+might their conjunctive force seem more potent; as life goes, however,
+unhappily, they are not always so provided, and the English “but” takes
+on its Gallic significance, which leads the Frenchman to define it as
+meaning “the end.”
+
+There was an object-lesson in store for the Perkinses.
+
+On the Sunday following the discussion with which this story opens, the
+Perkinses, always hospitable, though distinctly unsociable so far as the
+returning of visits went, received a visit from their friends the
+Bradleys.  Ordinarily a visit from one’s town friends is no very great
+undertaking for a suburban host or hostess, but when the town friends
+have children from whom they are inseparable, and those children have
+nurses who, whithersoever the children go, go there also, such a visit
+takes on proportions the stupendousness of which I, being myself a
+suburban entertainer, would prefer not to discuss, fearing lest some of
+my friends with families, recalling these words, might consider my
+remarks of a personal nature.  Let me be content with saying, therefore,
+that when the Bradleys, Mr. and Mrs., plus Master and Miss, plus Harriet,
+the English nurse, came to visit the Perkins homestead that Sunday, it
+was a momentous occasion for the host and hostess, and, furthermore, like
+many another momentous occasion, was far-reaching in its results.
+
+In short, it provided the Perkins family with that object-lesson to which
+I have already alluded.
+
+The Bradleys arrived on Sunday night, and as they came late little Harry
+Bradley and the still smaller Jennie Bradley were tired, and hence not at
+all responsive to the welcomes of the Perkinses, large or small.  They
+were excessively reticent.  When Mrs. Perkins, kneeling before Master
+Harry, asked him the wholly unnecessary question, “Why, is this Harry?”
+he refused wholly to reply; nor could the diminutive Jennie be induced to
+say anything but “Yumps” in response to a similar question put to her,
+“Yumps” being, it is to be presumed, a juvenilism for “Yes, ma’am.”
+Hence it was that the object-lesson did not begin to develop until
+breakfast on Sunday morning.  The first step in the lesson was taken at
+that important meal, when Master Harry observed, in stentorian yet
+sweetly soprano tones:
+
+“Hi wants a glarse o’ milk.”
+
+To which his nurse, standing behind his chair to relieve the Perkinses’
+maid of the necessity of looking after the Bradley hopefuls, replied:
+
+“’Ush, ’Arry, ’ush!  Wite till yer arsked.”
+
+Mrs. Bradley nodded approval to Harriet, and observed quietly to Mrs.
+Perkins that Harriet was such a treasure; she kept the children so well
+in subjection.
+
+The incident passed without making any impression upon the minds of any
+but Thaddeus junior, who, taking his cue from Harry, vociferously
+asserted that he, too, wished a glass of milk, and in such terms as made
+the assertion tantamount to an ultimatum.
+
+Then Miss Jennie seemed to think it was her turn.
+
+“Hi doan’t care fer stike.  Hi wants chickin,” said she.  “I’n’t there
+goin’ ter be no kikes?”
+
+Mrs. Perkins laughed, though I strongly suspect that Thaddeus junior
+would have been sent from the table had he ventured to express a similar
+sentiment.  Mrs. Bradley blushed; Bradley looked severe; Perkins had that
+expression which all parents have when other people’s children are
+involved, and which implies the thought, “If you were mine there’d be
+trouble; but since you are not mine, how cunning you are!”  But Harriet,
+the nurse, met the problem.  She said:
+
+“Popper’s goin’ ter have stike, Jinnie; m’yby Mr. Perkins’ll give yer
+lots o’ gryvy.  Hit i’n’t time fer the kikes.”
+
+Perhaps I ought to say to those who have not studied dialect as “she is
+spoke” that the word m’yby is the Seven Dials idiom for maybe, itself
+more or less an Americanism, signifying “perhaps,” while “kikes” is a
+controvertible term for cakes.
+
+After breakfast, as a matter of course, the senior members of both
+families attended divine service, then came dinner, and after dinner the
+usual matching of the children began.  The hopefuls of Perkins were
+matched against the scions of Bradley.  All four were brought down-stairs
+and into the parental presence in the library.
+
+“Your Harry is a fine fellow, Mrs. Bradley,” said Thaddeus.
+
+“Yes, we think Harry is a very nice boy,” returned Mrs. Bradley, with a
+fond glance at the youth.
+
+“Wot djer si about me, mar?” asked Harry.
+
+“Nothing, dear,” replied Mrs. Bradley, raising her eyebrows reprovingly.
+
+“Yes, yer did, too,” retorted Harry.  “Yer said as ’ow hi were a good
+boy.”
+
+“Well, ’e i’n’t, then,” interjected Jennie.  “’E’s a bloomin’ mean un.
+’E took a knoife an’ cut open me doll.”
+
+“’Ush, Jinnie, ’ush!” put in the nurse.  “Don’t yer tell tiles on ’Arry.
+’E didn’t mean ter ’urt yer doll.  ’Twas a haxident.”
+
+“No, ’twasn’t a haxident,” said Jennie.  “’E done it a-purpice.”
+
+“Well, wot if hi did?” retorted Harry.  “Didn’t yer pull the tile off me
+rockin’-’orse?”
+
+“Well, never mind,” said Bradley, seeing how strained things were
+getting.  “Don’t quarrel about it now.  It’s all done and gone, and I
+dare say you were both a little to blame.”
+
+“’Hi war’n’t!” said Harry, and then the subject was dropped.  The
+children romped in and out through the library and halls for some time,
+and the Bradleys and Perkinses compared notes on various points of
+interest to both.  After a while they again reverted to the subject of
+their children.
+
+“Does Harry go to school?” asked Bessie.
+
+“No, we think he’s too young yet,” returned Mrs. Bradley.  “He learns a
+little of something every day from Harriet, who is really a very superior
+girl.  She is a good servant.  She hasn’t been in this country very long,
+and is English to the core, as you’ve probably noticed, not only in her
+way of comporting herself, but in her accent.”
+
+“Yes, I’ve observed it,” said Bessie.  “What does she teach him?”
+
+“Oh, she tells him stories that are more or less instructive, and she
+reads to him.  She’s taught him one or two pretty little songs—ballads,
+you know—too.  Harry has a sweet little voice.  Harry, dear, won’t you
+sing that song about Mrs. Henry Hawkins for mamma?”
+
+“Don’t warn’ter,” said Harry.  “Hi’m sick o’ that bloomin’ old song.”
+
+“Seems to me I’ve heard it,” said Thaddeus.  “As I remember it, Harry, it
+was very pretty.”
+
+“It is,” said Bradley.  “It’s the one you mean—‘Oh, ’Lizer! dear ’Lizer!
+Mrs. ’Ennery ’Awkins.’  Harry sings it well, too; but I say, Thad, you
+ought to hear the nurse sing it.  It’s great.”
+
+“I should think it might be.”
+
+“She has the accent down fine, you know.”
+
+“Sort of born to it, eh?”
+
+“Yes; you can’t cultivate that accent and get it just right.”
+
+“I’ll do ‘Dear Old Dutch’ for yer,” suggested Harry.  “Hi likes thet
+better ’n ‘Mrs. ’Awkins.’”
+
+So Harry deserted “Mrs. ’Awkins” and sang that other pathetic
+coster-ballad, “Dear Old Dutch,” and, to the credit of Harriet, the
+nurse, it must be said that he was marvellously well instructed.  It
+could not have been done better had the small vocalist been the own son
+of a London coster-monger instead of the scion of an American family of
+refinement.
+
+Thus the day passed.  Jennie proved herself quite as proficient in the
+dialect of Seven Dials as was Harry, or even Harriet, and when she
+consented to stand on a chair and recite a few nursery rhymes, there was
+not an unnoticed “h” that she did not, sooner or later, pick up and
+attach to some other word to which it was not related, as she went along.
+
+In short, as far as their speech was concerned, thanks to association
+with Harriet, Jennie and Harry were as perfect little cockneys as ever
+ignored an aspirate.
+
+The visit of the Bradleys, like all other things, came to an end, and
+Bessie, Thaddeus, and the children were once more left to themselves.
+Teddy junior, it was observed, after his day with Harry, developed a
+slight tendency to misplace the letter “h” in his conversation, but it
+was soon corrected, and things ran smoothly as of yore.  Only—the Only
+being the natural sequence of the But referred to some time since—Mr. and
+Mrs. Perkins changed their minds about the French nurse, and it came
+about in this way:
+
+“Thaddeus,” said Bessie, after the Bradleys had departed, “what is the
+tile of a rockin’-’orse?”
+
+“I don’t know.  Why?” asked Thaddeus.
+
+“Why, don’t you remember,” she said, “young Harry Bradley accused Jennie
+of pulling out the tile of his rockin’-’orse?”
+
+“Oh yes!  Ha, ha!” laughed Thaddeus.  “So she did.  I know now.  Tile is
+cockney for tail.”
+
+“Did you notice the accent those children had?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“All got from the nurse, too?”
+
+“True.”
+
+“Ah, Teddy, what do you think of our getting a French maid, after all?
+Don’t you think that we’d run a great risk?”
+
+“Of what?”
+
+“Of having Ted speak—er—cockney French.”
+
+“H’m—yes.  Very likely,” said Thaddeus.  “I’d thought of that myself,
+and, I guess, perhaps we’d better stick to Irish.”
+
+“So do I.  We can correct any tendency to a brogue, don’t you think?”
+
+“Certainly,” said Thaddeus.  “Or, if we couldn’t, it wouldn’t be fatal to
+the boy’s prospects.  It might even help him if he—”
+
+“Help him?  If what?”
+
+“If he ever went into polities,” said Perkins.
+
+And that was the object-lesson which a kindly fate gave to the Perkinses
+in time to prevent their engaging a French maid for the children.
+
+As to its value as a lesson, as to the value of its results, those who
+are familiar with French as spoken by nurse-instructed youths can best
+judge.
+
+I am not unduly familiar with that or any other kind of French, but I
+have ideas in the matter.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHRISTMAS GIFTS OF THADDEUS
+
+
+THAT you may thoroughly comprehend how it happened that on last Christmas
+Day Thaddeus meted out gifts of value so unprecedented to the domestics
+of what he has come to call his “menagerie”—the term menage having seemed
+to him totally inadequate to express the state of affairs in his
+household—I must go back to the beginning of last autumn, and narrate a
+few of the incidents that took place between that period and the season
+of Peace on Earth and Good-will to Men.  Should I not do so there would
+be many, I doubt not, who would deem Thaddeus’s course unjustifiable,
+especially when we are all agreed that Christmas Day should be for all
+sorts and conditions of men the gladdest, happiest day of all the year.
+
+Thaddeus and Bessie and the little Thad had returned to their attractive
+home after an absence of two months in a section of the Adirondacks
+whither the march of civilization had not carried such comforts as gas,
+good beds, and other luxuries, to which the little family had become so
+accustomed that real camp-life, with its beds of balsam, lights of
+tallow, and “fried coffee,” possessed no charms for them.  They were all
+renewed in spirit and quite ready to embark once more upon the troubled
+seas of house-keeping; and, as they saw it on that first night at home,
+their crew was a most excellent one.  The cook rose almost to the exalted
+level of a chef in the estimation of Thaddeus as course upon course, to
+the number of seven, each made up of some delicacy of the season, came to
+the table and received the indorsement which comes from total
+consumption.  They were well served, too, these courses; and the two
+heads of the family, when Mary, the waitress, would enter the butler’s
+pantry, leaving them alone and unobserved, nodded their satisfaction to
+each other across the snow-white cloth, and by means of certain
+well-established signals, such as shaking their own hands and winking the
+left eye simultaneously, with an almost vicious jerk of the head,
+silently congratulated themselves upon the prospects of a peaceful future
+in a domestic sense.
+
+“That was just the best dinner I have had in centuries,” said Thaddeus,
+as they adjourned to the library after the meal was over.  “The broiled
+chicken was so good, Bess, that for a moment I wished I were a bachelor
+again, so that I could have it all; and after I got over my first feeling
+of hesitation over the oysters, and realized that it was September with
+an R—belated, it is true, but still there—and ate six of them, I think I
+could have gone down-stairs and given cook a diamond ring with seven
+solitaires in it and a receipted bill for a seal-skin sacque.  I don’t
+see how we ever could have thought of discharging her last June, do you?”
+
+“It was a good dinner,” said Bessie, discreetly ignoring the allusion to
+their intentions in June; for she had a well-defined recollection that at
+that time Bridget had given signs of emotional insanity every time she
+was asked to prepare a five-o’clock breakfast for Thaddeus and his
+friends, to the number of six, who had acquired the habit of going off on
+little shooting trips every Saturday, making the home of Thaddeus their
+headquarters over Sunday, when the game the huntsmen had bagged the day
+before had to be plucked, cleaned, and cooked by her own hands for
+dinner.  “And it was nicely selected, too,” she added.  “I sometimes
+think that I’ll let Bridget do the ordering at the market.”
+
+“H’m!  Well,” said Thaddeus, shaking his head dubiously, “I haven’t a
+doubt that Bridget could do it, and would be very glad to do it; but I
+don’t believe in setting a cook up in business.”
+
+“How do you mean?”
+
+“I mean that I haven’t any doubt that Bridget would in a very short time
+become a highly successful produce-broker with bull tendencies.  The
+chicken market would be buoyant, and the quotations on the Stock Exchange
+of, say, B., S., and P.-U.-C.—otherwise, Beef, Succotash, and
+Picked-Up-Codfish—would rise to the highest point in years.  Why, my
+dear, by Christmas-time cook would have our surplus in her own
+pocket-book; and in the place of the customary five oranges and an apple
+she would receive from the butcher a Christmas-card in the shape of a
+check of massive, if not graceful, proportions.  No, Bess, I think the
+old way is the best.”
+
+“Perhaps it is.  By-the-way, John has kept the grounds looking well,
+hasn’t he?  The lawn doesn’t seem to have a weed on it,” said Bessie,
+walking to the window and gazing out at the soft velvety sward in the
+glow of twilight.
+
+“Yes, it looks pretty well; but there’s a small heap of stuff over there
+near the fence which rather inclines me to believe that the weeds have
+been pulled out within the last few days—in fact, since you wrote to
+announce our return.  John is an energetic man in an emergency, and I
+haven’t a doubt he has been here at least once a week ever since we left.
+I’ll keep a record of John this fall.”
+
+And so the two contented home-comers talked happily along, and when they
+closed their eyes in sleep that night they were, upon the whole, very
+well satisfied with life.
+
+Weeks elapsed, and with them some of the air-castles collapsed.  Whether
+custom staled the infinite variety of the cook’s virtues, and age
+withered the efficiency of Mary, the waitress, or whether something was
+really and radically wrong with the girls, Thaddeus and Bessie could not
+make out.  Certain it was, however, that by slow degrees the satisfaction
+for which that first dinner seemed to stand as guarantor wore away, and
+dissatisfaction entered the household.  Mary developed a fondness for
+church at most inconvenient hours—hours at which in fact, neither
+Thaddeus nor Bessie had ever supposed church could be.  That it was
+eternal they both knew, but they had always supposed there were
+intermissions.  Then the cook’s family, which had hitherto been
+moderately healthful, began to show signs of invalidism, though no such
+calamity as actual dissolution ever set its devastating step within the
+charmed circle of her relatives.  Cousins fell ill whom she alone could
+comfort; nephews developed maladies for which she alone could care; and,
+according to Thaddeus’s record, John had been compelled on penalty of a
+fine to attend the funerals of some twenty-four deceased intimate friends
+in less than two months, although the newspapers contained no mention of
+the existence of a possible epidemic in the Celtic quarter.  It is true
+that John showed a more pronounced desire to make his absence less
+inconvenient to his employer than did Mary and the cook, by providing a
+substitute when the Ancient Order of Funereal Hibernians compelled him to
+desert the post of duty; but Thaddeus declared the “remedy worse than the
+disease,” for the reason that John’s substitute—his own
+brother-in-law—was a weaver by trade, whose baskets the public did not
+appreciate, and whose manner of cutting grass in the early fall and of
+tending furnace later on was atrocious.
+
+“If I could hire that man in summer,” Thaddeus remarked one night when
+John’s substitute had “fixed” the furnace so that the library resembled a
+cold-storage room, “I think we could make this house an arctic paradise.
+He seems to have a genius for taking warmth by the neck and shaking
+enough degrees of heat out of it to turn a conflagration into an iceberg.
+I think I’ll tell the Fire Commissioners about him.”
+
+“He can’t compare with John,” was Bessie’s answer to this.
+
+“No.  I think that’s why John sends him here when he is off riding in
+carriages in honor of his deceased chums.  By the side of Dennis, John is
+a jewel.”
+
+“John is very faithful with the furnace,” said Bessie.  “He never lets it
+go down.  Why, day before yesterday I turned off every register in the
+house, and even then had to open all the windows to keep from
+suffocating.”
+
+“But that wasn’t all John, my dear,” said Thaddeus.  “The Weather Bureau
+had something to do with it.  It was a warm day for this season of the
+year, anyhow.  If John could combine the two businesses of selling coal
+and feeding furnaces, I think he would become a millionaire.  And,
+by-the-way, I think you ought to speak to him, Bess, about the windows.
+Since you gave him the work of window-cleaning to do, it is evident that
+he thinks I have nothing to say in the matter, for he persistently
+ignores my requests that he clean them in squares as they are made, and
+not rub up a little circle in the middle, so that they look like blocks
+of opalescent glass with plate-glass bulls’-eyes let into the centre.
+Look at them now.”
+
+“Dennis did that.  John had to go to Mount Vernon with his militia
+company to-day.”
+
+“Dennis is well named, for his name is—But never mind.  I’ll credit John
+with his twelfth day off in four weeks.”
+
+From John to Bridget, in the matter of days off, was an easy step, though
+such was Bessie’s consummate diplomacy that Thaddeus would probably have
+continued in ignorance of the extent to which Bridget absented herself
+had they not both taken occasion one day to visit some relatives in
+Philadelphia, and on their return home at night found no dinner awaiting
+them.
+
+“What’s the matter now?” asked Thaddeus, a little crossly, perhaps, for
+visiting relatives in Philadelphia irritated him—possibly because he and
+they did not agree in politics, and their assumption that Thaddeus’s
+party was entirely made up of the ignorant and self-seeking was galling
+to him.  “Why isn’t dinner ready?”
+
+“Mary says that an hour after we left cook got a telegram from New York
+saying that her brother was dying, and she had to go right off.”
+
+“I thought that brother was dying last week?”
+
+“No; that was her mother’s brother, he got well.  This is another person
+entirely.”
+
+“Naturally,” snapped Thaddeus.  “But next time we get a cook let’s have
+one whose relatives are all dead, or in the old country, where they can’t
+be reached.  I’m tired of this business.”
+
+“Well, you shouldn’t be cross with me about it, Thad,” said Bessie, with
+a teary look in her eyes.  “I have to put up with a great deal more of it
+than you have, only you never know of it.  Why, I’ve cooked one-half of
+my own luncheons in the last month.”
+
+“And the dinners, too, I’ll wager,” growled Thaddeus.
+
+“No; she’s always got home for dinner heretofore.”
+
+“Well, we’ll keep a record-book for her, too, then.  And we’ll be
+generous with her.  We’ll allow her just as I was allowed in
+college—twenty-five per cent. in cuts.  If she has twenty-five and a
+fifth per cent. she goes.”
+
+“I don’t think I understand,” said Bessie.
+
+“Well, we’ll put it this way: There are thirty days in a month.  That
+means ninety meals a month.  If she cooks sixty-seven and a half of them
+she can stay; if she fails to cook the other twenty-two and a half she
+can stay; but woe be unto her if she slips up by even so little as a
+millionth part of the sixty-eighth!”
+
+“I don’t see how you can manage the half part of it.”
+
+“We’ll leave that to her,” said Thaddeus, firmly; “and, what is more,
+we’ll put John and Mary on the same basis, and Dennis we won’t have on
+any basis at all.  A man who will take advantage of his brother’s absence
+at a wake to black the shoes of that brother’s only employer with
+stove-polish is not the kind of a man I want to have around.”
+
+“It will be a very good plan,” said Bessie, “for all except Mary.  Her
+absences she cannot well avoid.  She has to go to church.”
+
+“How many times a week does she have to go?” queried Thaddeus.
+
+“She is required to go to confession.”
+
+“Well, let her reform, and then she’ll have nothing to go to confession
+for.  I don’t believe that’s where she goes, either.  I notice that
+one-half those evenings she takes off, permitting me to mind the front
+door, and enabling us both to acquire proficiency in the art of helping
+ourselves at dinner, there’s a fireman’s ball or a policeman’s hop or a
+letter-carriers’ theatre party going on somewhere in the county, and it’s
+my belief the worshipping she does on these occasions is at the shrine of
+Terpsichore or that of Melpomene, which is a heathen custom and not to be
+tolerated here.  If she’s so fond of living in church we can quote to her
+Hamlet’s advice to Ophelia—‘Get thee to a nunnery!’  Why, Bess, I was
+mortified to death the other night when Bradley dined here, he’s all the
+time bragging about his menagerie, and I tried to bluff him out and make
+him believe we were waited on by angels in disguise, and you know what
+happened.  He came, saw, and I was regularly knocked out.  You let us in;
+we waited on ourselves; cook had prepared the seven-o’clock dinner at
+five to give her a chance to go to the hospital to see her brother-in-law
+with the measles; John had one of his Central-African fires on, and
+Bradley’s laughing about it yet.”
+
+“Mr. Bradley was very disagreeable the other night, anyhow,” sniffed
+Bessie.  “He acted as if he were camping out!”
+
+“Well, I can’t honestly say I blame him for that,” retorted Thaddeus.
+“It only needed a balsam bed and a hole in the roof to let the rain in on
+him to complete the illusion.”
+
+Finally, December came, and the tendencies of absenteeism on the part of
+the servants showed no signs of abatement.  They were remonstrated with,
+but it made no difference.  They didn’t go out, they declared, because
+they wanted to, but because they had to.  Cook couldn’t let her relatives
+go unattended.  Mary’s religious scruples simply dragged her out of the
+house, try as she would to stay in; and as for John, as long as Dennis
+was on hand to take his place he couldn’t see why Mr. Perkins was
+dissatisfied.  To tell the truth, John had recently imbibed some more or
+less capitalistic—or anticapitalistic—doctrines, and he was quite
+incapable of understanding why, if a street-contractor, for instance, was
+permitted by the laws of the land to sublet the work for which he had
+contracted, he, John, should not be permitted to sublet his contract to
+Dennis, piecemeal, or even as a whole, if he saw fit to do so.
+
+Thaddeus, seeing that Bessie was very much upset by the condition of
+affairs, had said little about it since Thanksgiving Day, when he had
+said about as much as the subject warranted after a six-course dinner had
+been hurried through in one hour, two courses having been omitted that
+Bridget might catch the train leaving for New York at 3.10.  Nor would he
+have said anything further than the final words of dismissal had he not
+come home late one afternoon to dress for a dinner at his club, when he
+discovered that, owing to the usual causes, the week’s wash, which the
+combined efforts of cook and waitress should have finished that day, was
+delayed twenty-four hours, the consequence being that Thaddeus had to
+telephone to the haberdashery for a dress-shirt and collar.
+
+“It’s bad enough having one’s wife buy these things for one, but when it
+comes to having a salesman sell you over a telephone the style of shirt
+and collar ‘he always wears himself,’ it is maddening,” began Thaddeus,
+and then he went on at such an outrageous rate that Bessie became
+hysterical, and Thaddeus’s conscience would not permit of his going out
+at all that night, and that was the beginning of the end.
+
+“I’ll fix ’em at Christmas-time,” said Thaddeus.
+
+“You won’t forget them at Christmas, I hope, Thad,” said Bessie, whose
+forgiving nature would not hear of anything so ungenerous as forgetting
+the servants during the holidays.
+
+“No,” laughed Thaddeus.  “I won’t forget ’em.  I’ll give ’em all the very
+things they like best.”
+
+“Oh, I see,” smiled Bessie.  “On the coals-of-fire principle.  Well, I
+shouldn’t wonder but it would work admirably.  Perhaps they’ll be so
+ashamed they’ll do better.”
+
+“Perhaps—if the coals do not burn too deep,” said Thaddeus, with a
+significant smile.
+
+Christmas Eve arrived, and little Thad’s tree was dressed, the gifts were
+arranged beneath it, and all seemed in readiness for the dawning of the
+festal day, when Bessie, taking a mental inventory of the packages and
+discovering nothing among them for the servants save her own usual
+contribution of a dress and a pair of gloves for each, turned and said to
+Thaddeus:
+
+“Where are the hot coals?”
+
+“The what?” asked Thaddeus.
+
+“The coals of fire for the girls and John.”
+
+“Oh!” Thaddeus replied, “I have ’em in the library.  I don’t think
+they’ll go well with the tree.”
+
+“What are they?” queried Bess, with a natural show of curiosity.
+“Checks?”
+
+“Yes, partly,” said Thaddeus.  “Mary is to have a check for $16, Bridget
+one for $18, and John one for $40.”
+
+“Why, Thaddeus, that’s extravagant.  Now, my dear, there’s no use of your
+doing anything of that—”
+
+“Wait and see,” said Thaddeus.
+
+“But, Teddy!” Bessie remonstrated.  “Those are the amounts of their
+wages.  You will spoil them, and if I—”
+
+“As I said before, wait, Bess, wait!” said Thaddeus, calmly.  “You’ll
+understand the whole scheme to-morrow, after breakfast.”
+
+And she did, and when she did she almost wished for a moment that she
+didn’t, for after breakfast Thaddeus summoned the three offenders into
+his presence, and the effect was not altogether free from painful
+features to the forgiving Bess.
+
+“Bridget,” Thaddeus said, “do you remember what Mrs. Perkins gave you
+last Christmas?”
+
+“I do not!” replied Bridget, rather uncompromisingly; for it was a matter
+of history that she thought Mrs. Perkins on the last Christmas festival
+had shown signs of parsimony in giving her a calico gown instead of one
+of silk.
+
+“Well, you won’t forget next year what you got this,” said Thaddeus,
+dryly.  “Here is an envelope containing $18, the amount of your wages
+until January 1st.  Mary, what did you get last Christmas?”
+
+“A box of candy, sir.”
+
+“Nothing else?”
+
+“I believe there was a dress of some kind.  I gave it to my cousin.”
+
+“Good.  I am glad you were so generous.  Here is an envelope for you.  It
+has $16 in it, your wages up to January 1st.”
+
+Bessie stood in the doorway, a mute witness to what seemed to her an
+incomprehensible scene.
+
+“John, what did you get?”
+
+“Five dollars an’ a day off.”
+
+“And a two-dollar bill for Dennis, eh?”
+
+“Dennis got that.”
+
+“True.  Well, John, here’s $40 for you—that pays you until January 1st.
+Now, it strikes me that, considering the behavior of you three people, I
+am very generous to pay you your wages a week in advance, but I am not
+going to stop there.  I have studied you all very carefully, and I’ve
+tried to discover what it is you are fondest of.  Cook and Mary do not
+seem to care much for dresses, though I believe there are dresses and
+gloves under the tree for them, which fact they will doubtless forget by
+next Christmas Day.  The five dollars and a day off John seems to
+remember, though from his manner of recalling it I do not think his
+remembrance is a very pleasing one.  Now I’ve found out what it is you
+all like the best, and I’m going to give it to you.”
+
+Here the trio endeavored to appear gracious, though they were manifestly
+uneasy and a bit dissatisfied with what John would have called “the luks
+of t’ings.”
+
+“Cook, from the 1st of January, may go to her relatives, and stay until
+they’re every one of them restored to health, if it takes forty years.
+Mary may consider herself presented with sixty years’ vacation without
+pay; and for you, John, I have written this letter of recommendation to
+the proprietors of a large undertaking establishment in New York, who
+will, I trust, engage you as a chief mourner, or perhaps hearse-driver,
+for the balance of your days.  At any rate, you, too, after January 1st,
+may consider yourself free to go to any funeral or militia exercises, or
+anything else you may choose to honor with your presence, at your own
+expense.  You are all given leave of absence without pay until further
+notice.  I wish you a merry Christmas.  Good-morning.”
+
+There were no farewells in the house that day; and inasmuch as there was
+no Christmas dinner either, Thaddeus and Bessie did not miss the service
+of the waitress, who, when last seen, was walking airily off towards the
+station, accompanied by the indignant John and a bundle-laden cook.  Next
+day their trunks went also.
+
+“It was rather a hard thing to do on Christmas Day, Thaddeus,” said
+Bessie, a little later.
+
+“Oh no,” quibbled Thaddeus.  “It was very easy under the circumstances,
+and quite appropriate.  This is the time of peace on earth and good-will
+to men.  The only way for us to have peace on earth was to get rid of
+those two women; and as for John, he has my good-will, now that he is no
+longer in my employ.”
+
+
+
+
+A STRANGE BANQUET
+
+
+“THADDEUS,” said Bessie to her husband as they sat at breakfast one
+morning, shortly after the royal banquet over which “Grimmins” had
+presided, “did you hear anything strange in the house last night?
+Something like a footstep in the hall?”
+
+“No,” said Thaddeus.  “I slept like a top last night.  I didn’t hear
+anything.  Did you?”
+
+“I thought so,” said Bessie.  “About two o’clock I waked up with a start,
+and while it may have been a sort of waking dream, I was almost certain I
+heard a rustling sound out in the hall, and immediately after a creaking
+on the stairs, as though there was somebody there.”
+
+“Well, why on earth didn’t you wake me, Bess?” returned Thaddeus.  “I
+could easily have decided the matter by getting up and investigating.”
+
+“That was why I didn’t wake you, Teddy.  I’d a great deal rather lose the
+silver or anything else in the house a burglar might want than have you
+hit on the head with a sand-club,” said Bessie.  “You men are too brave.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Thaddeus, with a smile, as he thought of a certain
+discussion he had had not long before at the club, in which he and
+several other brave men had reached the unanimous conclusion that the
+best thing to do at dead of night, with burglars in the house, was to
+crawl down under the bedclothes and snore as loudly as possible.
+“Nevertheless, my dear, you should have told me.”
+
+“I will next time,” said Bessie.
+
+“Was anything in the house disturbed?” Thaddeus asked.
+
+“No,” said Bessie.  “Not a thing, as far as I can find out.  Mary says
+that everything was all right when she came down, and the cook apparently
+found things straight, because she hasn’t said anything.”
+
+So Thaddeus and Bessie made up their minds that the latter had been
+dreaming, and that nothing was wrong.  Two or three days later, however,
+they changed their minds on the subject.  There was something decidedly
+wrong, but what it was they could not discover.  They were both awakened
+by a rustling sound in the hallway, outside of their room, and this time
+there was a creak on the stairs that was unmistakable.
+
+“Don’t move, Thaddeus,” said Bessie, in a terrified whisper, as Thaddeus
+made a brave effort to get up and personally investigate.  “I wouldn’t
+have you hurt for all the world, and there isn’t a thing down-stairs they
+can take that we can’t afford to lose.”
+
+Thaddeus felt very much as Bessie did, and it would have pleased him much
+better to lie quietly where he was than run the risk of an encounter with
+thieves.  He had been brave enough in the company of men to advocate
+cowardice in an emergency of just this sort, but now that this same
+course was advocated by his wife, he saw it in a different light.
+Prudence was possible, cowardice was not.  He must get up, and get up he
+did; but before going out of his room he secured his revolver, which had
+lain untouched and unloaded in his bureau-drawer for two years, and then
+advanced cautiously to the head of the stairs and listened—Bessie
+meanwhile having buried her face in her pillow as a possible means of
+assuaging her fears.  It is singular what a soothing effect a soft
+feather pillow sometimes has upon the agitated nerves if the nose of the
+agitated person is thrust far enough into its yielding surface.
+
+“Who is there?” cried Thaddeus, standing at the head of the stairs, his
+knees all of a shake, but whether from fear or from cold, as an admirer
+of Thaddeus I prefer not to state.
+
+Apparently the stage-whisper in which this challenge to a possible
+burglar was uttered rendered it unavailing, for there was no reply; but
+that there was some one below who could reply Thaddeus was now convinced,
+for there were sounds in the library—sounds, however, suggestive of undue
+attention to domestic duties rather than of that which fate has mapped
+out for house-breakers.  The library floor was apparently being swept.
+
+“That’s the biggest idiot of a burglar I’ve ever heard of,” said
+Thaddeus, returning to his room.
+
+“Wh-wha-what, d-dud-dear?” mumbled Mrs. Perkins, burying her ear in the
+pillow for comfort now that she was compelled to take her nose away so
+that she might talk intelligibly.
+
+“I say that burglar must be an idiot,” repeated Thaddeus.  “What do you
+suppose he is doing now?”
+
+“Wh-wha-what, d-dud-dear?” asked Bessie, apparently unable to think of
+any formula other than this in speaking, since this was the second time
+she had used it.
+
+“He is sweeping the library.”
+
+“Then you must not go down,” cried Bessie, sitting up, and losing her
+fear for a moment in her anxiety for her husband’s safety.  “A burglar
+you might manage, but a maniac—”
+
+“I must go, Bess,” said Thaddeus, firmly.
+
+“Then I’m going with you,” said Mrs. Perkins, with equal firmness.
+
+“Now, Bess, don’t be foolish,” returned Thaddeus, his face assuming a
+graver expression than his wife had ever seen there.  “This is my work,
+and it is none of yours.  I positively forbid you to stir out of this
+room.  I shall be very careful, and you need have no concern for me.  I
+shall go down the backstairs and around by the porch, and peep in through
+the library window first.  The moonlight will be sufficient to enable me
+to see all that is necessary.”
+
+“Very well,” acquiesced Bessie, “only do be careful.”
+
+Thaddeus donned his long bath-robe, put on his slippers, and started to
+descend.  The stairs were so dark that he could with difficulty
+proceed—and perhaps it was just as well for Thaddeus that they were.  If
+there had been light enough for him to see two great glaring eyes that
+stared at him through that darkness out from the passageway at the foot
+of the stairs, upon which he turned his back when he went out upon the
+porch, it is not unlikely that a very serious climax to his strange
+experience would have been reached then and there.  As it was, he saw
+nothing, but kept straight ahead, stepped noiselessly out upon the
+piazza, crept stealthily along in the soft light of the moon, until he
+reached the library window.  There he stopped and listened.  All was
+still within—so still that the beating of his heart seemed like the
+hammering of a sledge upon an anvil by contrast.  Then, raising himself
+cautiously upon his toes, he peered through the window into the room, the
+greater part of which was made visible by the wealth of the moon’s light
+streaming into it.
+
+“Humph!” said Thaddeus, after he had directed his searching gaze into
+every corner.  “There isn’t anybody there at all.  Most incomprehensible
+thing I ever heard of.”
+
+Rising, he walked back to the piazza door, and went thence boldly into
+the library and lit the gas.  His piazza observations were then verified,
+for the room was devoid of life, save for Thaddeus’s own presence; but
+upon the floor before the hearth was a broom, and there were evidences
+also that the sweeping sounds he had heard had been caused by no less an
+instrument than this, for in the corner of the fireplace was a heap of
+dust, cigar ashes, and scraps of paper, which Thaddeus remembered had
+been upon the hearth in greater or less quantity when he had turned out
+the gas to retire a few hours before.
+
+“This is a serious matter,” he said to himself.  “Something is wrong, and
+I doubt if there have been burglars in the house; but I can ascertain
+that without trouble.  If the doors and windows are all secure the
+trouble is internal.”
+
+Every accessible door and window on the basement and first floor was
+examined, and, with the exception of the piazza door, which Thaddeus
+remembered to have unlocked himself a few minutes before, every lock was
+fastened.  The disturbance had come from within.
+
+“And Bess must never know it,” said he; “it would worry her to death.”
+And then came a thought to Thaddeus’s mind that almost stopped the
+beating of his heart.  “Unless she has discovered it in my absence,” he
+gasped.  In an instant he was mounting the stairs to hasten to Bessie’s
+side, as though some terrible thing were pursuing him.
+
+“Well, what was it, Ted?” she asked, as he entered the room.
+
+Perkins gave a sigh of relief.  All was safe enough above-stairs at
+least.
+
+“Nothing much,” said Thaddeus, in a moment.  “There is no one below.”
+
+“But what could it have been?”
+
+“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Thaddeus, “unless it was a stray cat
+in the house.  The sweeping sound may have been caused by a cat
+scratching its collar—or purring—or—or—something.  At any rate, things
+appear to be all right, my dear, so let’s go to sleep.”
+
+Thaddeus’s assumed confidence in the rightness of everything, rather than
+his explanations, was convincing to Mrs. Perkins, and in a very short
+while she was sleeping the sleep of the just and serene; but to
+Thaddeus’s eye there came no more sleep that night, and when morning came
+he rose unrefreshed.  There were two problems confronting him.  The first
+was to solve the mystery of the swept library floor; the second was to do
+this without arousing his wife’s suspicions that anything was wrong.  To
+do the first he deemed it necessary to remain at home that day, which was
+easy, for Thaddeus was more or less independent of office-work.
+
+“I’m glad you’re not going down,” said Mrs. Perkins, when he announced
+his intention of remaining at home.  “You will be able to make up for
+your loss of sleep last night.”
+
+“Yes,” said Thaddeus.  “It’s the only thing I can do, I’m so played out.”
+
+Breakfast passed off pleasantly in spite of a great drawback—the steak
+was burned almost to a crisp, and the fried potatoes were like chips of
+wood.
+
+“Margaret seems to be unfamiliar with the art of cooking this morning,”
+said Thaddeus.
+
+“So it would seem,” said Bessie.  “This steak is horrible.”
+
+“The worst part of it is,” said Thaddeus, “she has erred on the wrong
+side.  If the steak were underdone it wouldn’t be so bad.  Isn’t it a
+pity Edison can’t invent a machine to rarefy an overdone steak?”
+
+“That would be a fine idea,” smiled Bessie.  “And to take a Saratoga chip
+and make it less like a chip off a granite block.”
+
+“I don’t mind the potatoes so much,” said Thaddeus.  “I can break them up
+in a bowl of milk and secure a gastronomic novelty that, suitably
+seasoned, isn’t at all bad, but the steak is hopeless.”
+
+“Maybe she heard that cat last night, and thought it was a burglar, just
+as we did,” Bessie suggested.  “I can’t account for a breakfast like this
+in any other way, can you?”
+
+“No,” said Thaddeus, shortly, and then he had an idea; and when Thaddeus
+had an idea he was apt to become extremely reticent.
+
+“Poor Thad!” thought Bessie, as she noted his sudden change of demeanor.
+“He can’t stand loss of sleep.”
+
+The morning was spent by Thaddeus in the “noble pastime of snooping,” as
+he called it.  The house was searched by him in a casual sort of way from
+top to bottom for a clew to the mystery, but without avail.  Several
+times he went below to the cellar, ostensibly to inspect his coal supply,
+really to observe the demeanor of Margaret, the cook.  Barring an unusual
+pallor upon her cheek, she appeared to be as she always had been; but
+with the waitress it was different.  Mary was evidently excited over
+something, but over what Thaddeus could not, of course, determine at that
+time.  Later in the day, however, the cause of her perturbation came out,
+and Thaddeus’s effort to keep Bessie from anxiety over the occurrence of
+the night before was rendered unavailing.  It was at luncheon.  The table
+was set in a most peculiar fashion.  The only china upon it was from an
+old set which had been discarded a year previous to the time of this
+story, and Bessie naturally wanted to know why, and the waitress broke
+down.
+
+“It’s—it’s all we have, ma’am,” said she, her eyes filling with tears.
+
+“All we have?” echoed Mrs. Perkins in surprise.  “Why, what do you mean?
+Where is the other set?”
+
+“I don’t know,” protested the waitress.
+
+“You don’t know?” said Thaddeus, taking the matter in hand.  “Why don’t
+you know?  Isn’t the china a part of your care?”
+
+“Yes, sir,” replied the maid, “but—it’s gone, sir, and I don’t know
+where.”
+
+“When did you miss it?” asked Thaddeus.
+
+“Not until I came to set the table for lunch.”
+
+“Was it in its proper place at breakfast-time?”
+
+“I didn’t notice, sir.  The breakfast dishes were all there, but I don’t
+remember seeing the other plates.  I didn’t think to look.”
+
+“Then it wasn’t a cat,” said Bessie, sinking back into her chair; “we
+have been robbed.”
+
+“Well, it’s the first time on record, I guess, that thieves have ever
+robbed a man of his china,” said Thaddeus, calmly.  “Have you looked for
+the plates?” he added, addressing the waitress.
+
+“No, sir,” she replied, simply.  “Where could I look?”
+
+“That’s so—where?” said Bessie.  “There isn’t much use looking for dishes
+when they disappear like that.  They aren’t like whisk-brooms or
+button-hooks to be mislaid easily.  We have been robbed; that’s all there
+is about that.”
+
+“Oh, well,” said Thaddeus, “let’s eat lunch, and see about it
+afterwards.”
+
+This was quite easy to say, but to eat under the circumstances was too
+much for either of the young householders.  The luncheon left the table
+practically untouched; and when it was over Thaddeus called his man into
+the house, wrote a note to the police-station, asking for an officer in
+citizen’s clothes at once, and despatched it by him, with the injunction
+to let very little grass grow under his feet on the way down to
+headquarters.  He then summoned the waitress into the library.
+
+“Have you said anything to Margaret about the china?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, sir,” she replied.
+
+“What did you say?”
+
+“I told her as how wasn’t it funny the way it had went, sir.”
+
+“And what did she say?”
+
+“Nothing, sir.  Only she seemed to think it was funny, because she
+laughed.”
+
+“And what did you say then?”
+
+“Nothing, Mr. Perkins.  Margaret and me have very little conversation,
+because she don’t fancy me, and prefers talkin’ to herself like.”
+
+“H’m!” said Thaddeus.  “Talks to herself, does she?”
+
+“All the time, sir,” returned the waitress, “and she seems very fond of
+it, sir.  She laughs, and says things, and then laughs again.  She does
+it by the hour.”
+
+“How long has this been going on?”
+
+“About a week, sir.  I noticed it first last time I had my day out.  I
+didn’t get in until nearly eleven o’clock, and I found her sitting at the
+table havin’ supper and talkin’ and laughin’ like as though there was
+folks around.”
+
+“She was entirely alone, was she?” asked Thaddeus.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“What did you do when you came in?”
+
+“I said ‘Hello’ to her and sat down opposite to her at the table, where
+there was a place set, and I told her I was glad she had something to eat
+and a place set for me, because I hadn’t had any supper and I was hungry,
+sir.”
+
+“Did she make any reply?”
+
+“No, sir.  She looked at me kind of indignant, and turned out the gas and
+went up to bed, leaving me in the dark.”
+
+Thaddeus’s brow grew thoughtful again.  It wrinkled into a half-dozen
+lines as he asked:
+
+“Why didn’t you speak of this before?”
+
+“It ain’t for me to be telling tales, Mr. Perkins,” she said.  “All cooks
+as I’ve lived with is queer like, and I didn’t think any more about it.”
+
+“All right,” said Thaddeus.  “You may go.  Only, Mary, don’t speak of the
+plates again to Margaret.  Say as little to her as you can, in fact,
+about anything.  If you notice anything queer, report to me at once.”
+
+The waitress left the room, and Thaddeus turned to his desk.  It was
+plain from his appearance that light was beginning to be let in on places
+that up to this point had been more or less dark to him, although, as a
+matter of fact, he could not in any way account for the mystery of the
+vanished plates any more than he could for the sweeping of the library in
+the still hours of the night.  He had an idea as to who the culprit was,
+and what that idea was is plain enough to us, but the question of motive
+was the great puzzle to him now.
+
+“If she did take them, why should she?” was the problem he was trying to
+solve; and then, as if his trials were not already great enough for one
+day, Bessie broke excitedly into the room.
+
+“Thaddeus!” she cried, “there’s something wrong in this house; my best
+table-cloth is missing, our dessert-spoons are gone, and what do you
+suppose has happened?”
+
+“I don’t know—a volcano has developed in the cellar, I suppose,” said
+Thaddeus.
+
+“No,” said Bessie, “it isn’t as bad as that; but the ice-cream man has
+telephoned up to know whether we want the cream for dinner or for eleven
+o’clock, according to the order as he understands it.”
+
+“Well,” said Thaddeus, “I don’t see anything very unusual in an ice-cream
+man’s needing to be told three or four times what is expected of him.”
+
+“But I never ordered any cream at all,” said Bessie.
+
+“Ah,” said Thaddeus, “that’s different.  Did you tell Partinelli so?”
+
+“I did, and he said he was sure he wasn’t mistaken, because he had taken
+the order himself.”
+
+“From you?”
+
+“No, from Margaret.”
+
+“Then it’s all right,” said Thaddeus; “it’s a clew that fits very nicely
+into my theory of our recent household disturbances.  If you will wait, I
+think things will begin to develop very shortly, and then we shall be
+able to dismiss this indictment against the cat we thought we heard last
+night.”
+
+“Do you think Margaret is dishonest?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Thaddeus.  “I shouldn’t be surprised if she had
+friends with taking ways; in other words, my dear, I suspect that
+Margaret is in league with people outside of this house who profit by her
+mistaken notions as to how to be generous; but I can’t prove it yet.”
+
+“But what are you going to do?”
+
+“Set a watch.  I have sent for a detective,” said Thaddeus.
+
+This was too much for Bessie.  She was simply overcome, and she sat
+squarely down upon the arm-chair, which fortunately was immediately
+behind her.  I think that if it had not been, she would have plumped down
+upon the floor.
+
+“Detective!” she gasped.
+
+“Exactly,” said Thaddeus, “and here he comes,” he added, as a carriage
+was driven up to the door and one of the citizen police descended
+therefrom.
+
+“You would better leave us to talk over this matter together,” said
+Thaddeus, as he hastened to the door.  “We shall be able to manage it
+entirely, and the details might make you nervous.”
+
+“I couldn’t be more nervous than I am,” said Bessie; “but I’ll leave you
+just the same.”
+
+Whereupon she went to her room, and Thaddeus, for an hour, was closeted
+with the detective, to which he detailed the whole story.
+
+“It’s one of the two,” said the latter, when Thaddeus had finished, “and
+I agree with you it is more likely to be the cook than the waitress.  If
+it was the waitress, she couldn’t have stood your examination as well as
+you say she did.  Perhaps I’d better see her, though, and talk to her
+myself.”
+
+“No, I shouldn’t,” said Thaddeus “we’ll pass you off as a business
+acquaintance of mine up from town, and you can stay all night and watch
+developments.”
+
+So it was arranged.  The detective was introduced into the family as a
+correspondent of Thaddeus’s firm, and he settled down to watch the
+household.  Afternoon and evening went by without developments, and at
+about eleven o’clock every light in the house was extinguished, and the
+whole family, from the head of the house to the cook, had apparently
+retired.
+
+At half-past eleven, however, there were decided signs of life within the
+walls of Thaddeus’s home.  The clew was working satisfactorily, and the
+complete revelation of the mystery was close at hand.
+
+The remainder of the narrative can best be told in the words of the
+detective:
+
+“When Mr. Perkins sent for me,” he said, “and told me all that had
+happened, I made up my mind that he had a servant in his house for whom
+the police had been on the lookout for some time.  I thought she was a
+certain Helen Malony, alias Bridget O’Shaughnessy, alias many other
+names, who was nothing more nor less than the agent of a clever band of
+thieves who had lifted thousands of dollars of swag in the line of
+household silver, valuable books, diamonds, and other things from private
+houses, where she had been employed in various capacities.  I could not
+understand why she should have made ’way with the dishes and Mrs.
+Perkins’s table-cloth, but there’s no accounting for tastes of people in
+that line of business, so I didn’t bother much trying to reason that
+matter out.
+
+“After we’d had dinner and spent the evening in Mr. Perkins’s library,
+the family went to bed, and I pretended to do the same.  Instead of
+really going to bed, I waited my chance and slipped down the stairs into
+the dining-room, and got under the table.  At eleven o’clock the
+maidservants went up to their rooms, and at quarter-past there wasn’t a
+light burning in the house.  I sat there in the dining-room waiting, and
+just as the clock struck half-past eleven I heard a noise out on the
+stairs, and in less than half a minute a sulphur match was struck almost
+over my head under the table, and there stood the cook, her face livid as
+that of a dead person, and in her hand she held a candle, which she lit
+with the match.  From where I was I could see everything she did, which
+was not much.  She simply gathered up all the table fixings she could,
+and started down-stairs into the kitchen with ’em.  Then I went up to Mr.
+Perkins’s room and called him.  He put on his clothes and got out his
+revolver, when we stole down-stairs together, leaving Mrs. Perkins
+up-stairs, with her boy’s nurse and the waitress to keep her company.
+
+“In a second we were in the laundry, which was as dark as the ace of
+spades, except where the light from four gas-jets in the kitchen streamed
+in through the half-open door.  Mr. Perkins was for pouncing in on the
+cook at once, but I was after the rest of the gang as much as I was for
+the cook, and I persuaded him to wait; and, by thunder, we were paid for
+waiting.  It was the queerest case I ever had.
+
+“That woman—looking for all the world like a creature from some other
+part of the universe than this earth, her eyes burning like two huge
+coals, her checks as yellow and clear as so much wax, and her lips
+blue-white, with a great flaming red tongue sort of laid between
+them—worked like a slave cleaning the floor, polishing the range, and
+scrubbing the table.  Then she dusted all the chairs, and, producing the
+missing table-cloth, she laid it snow-white upon the table.  In two
+minutes more the lost china was brought to light out of the flour-barrel,
+polished off, and set upon the table—enough for twenty people.  The
+dining-room things I had seen her take she arranged as tastefully as any
+one could want, and then the finest lay-out in the way of salads, cakes,
+fruits, and other good things I ever saw was brought in from the cellar.
+To do all this took a marvellously short time.  It was five minutes of
+midnight went she got through, and then she devoted three minutes to
+looking after herself.  She whisked out a small hand-glass and touched up
+her hair a bit.  Then she washed her hands and pinned some roses on her
+dress, smiled a smile I can never forget in my life, and opened the
+kitchen door and went out.
+
+“‘She’s going to give a supper!’ whispered Mr. Perkins.
+
+“‘It looks like it,’ said I.  ‘And a mighty fine one at that.’
+
+“In a minute she came back with a pail, in which were four bottles of
+champagne, in her hand.  This she took into the cellar, returning to the
+kitchen as the clock struck twelve.
+
+“Then the queerest part began,” said the detective.  “For ten minutes by
+the clock people were apparently arriving, though, as far as Mr. Perkins
+or I could see, there wasn’t a soul in the kitchen besides Margaret.  She
+was talking away like one possessed.  Every once in a while she’d stop in
+the middle of a sentence and rush to the door and shake hands with some,
+to us invisible, arrival.  Then she’d walk in with them chatting and
+laughing.  Several times she went through the motion of taking people’s
+hats, and finally, if we could judge from her actions, she had ’em all
+seated at the table.  She passed salads all around, helping each guest
+herself.  She sent them fruit and cakes, and then she brought out the
+wine, which she distributed in the same fashion.  She also apologized
+because some ice-cream she had ordered hadn’t come.
+
+“When the invisible guests appeared to have had all they could eat, she
+began the chatty part again, and never seemed to be disturbed but once,
+when she requested some one not to sing so loud for fear of disturbing
+the family.
+
+“Altogether it was the weirdest and rummest thing I’d ever seen in my
+life.  We watched it for one full hour, and then we quit because she did.
+At one o’clock she apparently bade her guests good-night, after which she
+gathered up and put away all the eatables there were left—and, of course,
+everything but what she had eaten herself still remained—cleaned all the
+dishes, restored them to their proper places in the dining-room pantry,
+and went back up-stairs to her room.
+
+“Mr. Perkins and I didn’t know what to make of it.  There wasn’t a thing
+stolen, and it was clear to my mind that I’d done the woman an injustice
+in connecting her with thieves.  She was honest, except in so far as she
+had ordered all those salads and creams and things from time to time on
+Mr. Perkins’s account, which was easy enough for her to do, since Mrs.
+Perkins let her do the ordering.  There was only one explanation of the
+matter.  She was crazy, and I said so.
+
+“‘I fancy you are right,’ said Mr. Perkins.  ‘We’ll have to send her to
+an asylum!’
+
+“‘That’s the thing,’ said I, ‘and we’d better do it the first thing in
+the morning.  I wouldn’t tackle her to-night, because she’s probably
+excited, and like as not would make a great deal of trouble.’
+
+“And that,” said the detective, “was where Mr. Perkins and I made our
+mistake.  Next morning she wasn’t to be found, and to this day I haven’t
+heard a word of her.  She disappeared just like that,” he said, snapping
+his fingers.  “Of course, I don’t mean to say that anything supernatural
+occurred.  She simply must have slipped down and out while we were
+asleep.  The front door was wide open in the morning, and a woman
+answering to her description was seen to leave the Park station, five
+miles from the Perkins house, on the six-thirty train that morning.”
+
+“And you have no idea where she is now?” I asked of the detective, when
+he had finished.
+
+“No,” he answered, “not the slightest.  For all I know she may be cooking
+for you at this very minute.”
+
+With which comforting remark he left me.
+
+For my part, I hope the detective was wrong.  If I thought there was a
+possibility of Margaret’s ever being queen of my culinary department, I
+should either give up house-keeping at once and join some simple
+community where every man is his own chef, or dine forevermore on canned
+goods.
+
+
+
+
+JANE
+
+
+SHE was quite the reverse of beautiful—to some she was positively
+unpleasant to look upon; but that made no difference to Mrs. Thaddeus
+Perkins, who, after long experience with domestics, had come to judge of
+the value of a servant by her performance rather than by her appearance.
+The girl—if girl she were, for she might have been thirty or sixty, so
+far as any one could judge from a merely superficial glance at her face
+and figure—was neat of aspect, and, what was more, she had come well
+recommended.  She bore upon her face every evidence of respectability and
+character, as well as one or two lines which might have indicated years
+or toothache—it was difficult to decide which.  On certain days, when the
+weather was very warm and she had much to do, the impression was that the
+lines meant years, and many of them, accentuated as they were by her
+pallor, the whiteness of her face making the lines seem almost black in
+their intensity.  When she smiled, however, which she rarely did—she was
+solemn enough to have been a butler—one was impressed with the idea of
+hours of pain from a wicked tooth.  At any rate, she was engaged as
+waitress, and put in charge of the first floor of the Perkins household.
+
+“I fancy we’ve at last got a real treasure,” said Mrs. Perkins.  “There’s
+no nonsense about Jane—I think.”  The last two words were added
+apologetically.
+
+“Where did you get her?” asked Thaddeus.  “At an Imbecility Office?”
+
+“I don’t quite know what you mean—an Imbecility Office?”
+
+“Only my pet, private, and particular name for it, my dear.  You would
+speak of it as an Intelligence Office, no doubt,” was the reply.  “My
+observation of the fruit of Intelligence Offices has convinced me that
+they deal in Imbecility.”
+
+“Not quite,” laughed Mrs. Perkins.  “They look after Domestic Vacancies.”
+
+“Well, they do it with a vengeance,” said Perkins.  “We’ve had more
+vacancies in this house to do our cooking and our laundering and our
+house-work generally than two able-bodied men could shake sticks at.  It
+seems to me that the domestic servant of to-day is fonder of
+preoccupation than of occupation.”
+
+“Jane, I think, is different from the general run,” said Mrs. Perkins.
+“As I said, she has no nonsense about her.”
+
+“Is she—an—an ornament to the scene—pretty, and all that?” asked Perkins.
+
+“Quite the reverse,” replied the little house-keeper.  “She is as plain
+as a—as a—”
+
+“Say hedge-fence and be done with it,” said Perkins.  “I’m glad of it.
+What’s the use of providing a good dinner for your friends if they are
+going to spend all their time looking at the waitress?  When I give a
+dinner it makes me tired to have the men afterwards speak of the waitress
+rather than of the _purée_ or the birds.  If any domestic is to dominate
+the repast at all it should be the cook.”
+
+“Service counts for a great deal, though, Ted,” suggested Mrs. Perkins.
+
+“True,” replied Thaddeus; “but on the whole, when I am starving, give me
+a _filet béarnaise_ served by a sailor, rather than an empty plate
+brought in in style by a butler of illustrious lineage and impressive
+manner.”  Then he added: “I hope she isn’t too homely, Bess—not a
+‘clock-stopper,’ as the saying is.  You don’t want people’s appetites
+taken away when you’ve worked for hours on a menu calculated to tickle
+the palates of your guests.  Would her homeliness—ah—efface itself, for
+instance, in the presence of a culinary creation, or is it likely to
+overshadow everything with its ineffaceable completeness?”
+
+“I think she’ll do,” returned Mrs. Perkins; “especially with your
+friends, who, it seems to me, would one and all insist upon finishing a
+‘creation,’ as you call it, even if lightning should strike the house.”
+
+“From that point of view,” said he, “I’m confident that Jane will do.”
+
+So Jane came, and for a year, strange to relate, was all that her
+references claimed for her.  She was neat, clean, and capable.  She was
+sober and industrious.  The wine had never been better served; the dinner
+had rarely come to the table so hot.  Had she been a butler of the first
+magnitude she could not so have discouraged the idea of acquaintance; her
+attraction, if anything, was a combination of her self-effacement and her
+ugliness.  The latter might have been noticed as she entered the
+dining-room; it was soon forgotten in the unconsciously observed ease
+with which she went through her work.
+
+“She’s fine,” said Perkins, after a dinner of twelve covers served by
+Jane with a pantry assistant.  “I’ve always had a sneaking notion that
+nothing short of a butler could satisfy me, but now I think otherwise.
+Jane is perfection, and there is nothing paralyzing about her, as there
+is about most of those reduced swells who wait on tables nowadays.”
+
+In August the family departed for the mountains, and the house was left
+in charge of Jane and the cook, and right faithfully did they fulfil the
+requirements of their stewardship.  The return in September found the
+house cleaned from top to bottom.  The hardwood floors and stairs shone
+as they had rarely shone before, and as only an unlimited application of
+what is vulgarly termed “elbow-grease” could make them shine.  The linen
+was immaculate.  Ireland is not freer from snakes than was the house of
+Perkins from cobwebs, and no speck of dust except those on the travellers
+was visible.  It was evident that even in the absence of the family Jane
+was true to her ideals, and the heart of Mrs. Perkins was glad.
+Furthermore, Jane had acquired a full third set of teeth, which seemed to
+take some of the lines from her face, and, as Perkins observed, added
+materially to the general effect of the surroundings, although they were
+distressingly new.  But, alas! they marked the beginning of the end.
+Jane ceased to wait upon the table with that solemnity which is essential
+to the manner of a “treasure”; she smiled occasionally, and where
+hitherto she had treated the conversation at the table with stolid
+indifference, a witticism would invariably now bring the new teeth unto
+view.
+
+“Alas!” cried Thaddeus, “our butleress has evoluted backwards.  She grins
+like an ordinary waitress.”
+
+It was too true.  The possession of brilliantly white teeth seemed to
+have brought with it a desire to show them, which was destructive of that
+dignity with which Jane had previously been hedged about, and substituted
+for it a less desirable atmosphere of possible familiarity, which might
+grow upon very slight provocation into intimacy, not to mention a nearer
+approach to social equality.
+
+“I don’t suppose we can blame her exactly,” said Perkins, when discussing
+one or two of Jane’s lapses from her old-time standard.  “I haven’t a
+doubt that if I’d gone for years without teeth, I’d become a regular
+Cheshire cat, with a new, complete _édition de luxe_ of celluloid molars.
+Still, I wish she’d paid more attention to the dinner and less to Mr.
+Barlow’s conversation last night.  She stood a whole minute, with the
+salad-bowl in her hand, waiting for him to reach the point of his story
+about the plumber who put a gas-pipe through Shakespeare’s tenor in
+Westminster Abbey, and when he finished, and she smiled, you’d have
+thought a dozen gravestones to the deceased’s memory had been conjured up
+before us.”
+
+“It’s a small fault, Thaddeus,” returned Mrs. Perkins, “but I’ll speak to
+her about it.”
+
+“Oh, I wouldn’t,” said Perkins; “let it go; she means well, and when we
+got her we didn’t suspect she’d turn out such a jewel.  She’s merely
+approaching her norm, that is all.  We ought to be thankful to have had
+such perfection for one year.  It’s too bad it couldn’t continue; but
+what perfection does?”
+
+Nothing, therefore, was said, and Jane smiled on, yet waited most
+acceptably and kept all things decently and in order—for a little while.
+Along about Christmas-time a further decadence and additional flaw in the
+jewel was discovered, and it was Perkins himself who discovered it.  It
+happened one day while he was at work alone in the house, Mrs. Perkins
+having gone out shopping.  A friend from Boston appeared—a friend
+interested in bric-à-brac and china generally.  Thaddeus, to whom a
+luncheon in solitary grandeur was little short of abomination, invited
+his Boston friend to stay and share pot-luck with him, knowing, hypocrite
+that he was, that pot-luck did not mean pot-luck at all, but a course
+luncheon which many men would have found all-sufficient at dinner.  The
+Boston friend accepted, and the luncheon was served by Jane.  In the
+course of the repast the visitor observed:
+
+“Pretty good china you have, Perkins.”
+
+“Yes,” returned Thaddeus, “pretty good.  I’ve always had a _penchant_ for
+china.  My mother-in-law thinks I’m extravagant, and sometimes I think
+she is right.  You never saw my Capodimonte coffees, did you?”
+
+“No,” replied the Bostonian, “I never did.  Where’d you get ’em?”
+
+“London,” replied Perkins, “last time I was over.  You must see them, by
+all means.  Ah, Jane, hand Mr. Bunkerrill one of the Capodimonte
+coffees.”
+
+“Wan o’ the what, sorr?” asked the treasure.
+
+Thaddeus blushed.  To have his jewel go back on him at such a crisis was
+excessively annoying.  “One of those gold after-dinner coffee-cups—one of
+the little ones, with the flowery raised figures,” he said, sharply.
+
+“Oh!” said Jane, “wan o’ thim with somebody else’s initial on the
+bottom?”
+
+“Yes,” said Thaddeus, fuming inwardly.
+
+“Quite a connoisseur, that woman,” laughed the visitor, as Jane went
+after the dinner-cup.  “She’s observed the china mark.  She know’s N
+doesn’t stand for Perkins.”
+
+Thaddeus laughed weakly.  “She probably thinks we got them second-hand,”
+he said.
+
+“Very likely you did,” retorted the Bostonian, and Jane returned with the
+desired cup.  “An admirable specimen,” continued the connoisseur; and
+them, turning the cup bottom upwards in search of the mark, he disclosed
+to his own and Thaddeus’s astonished gaze no less an object than the
+remains of a mashed green pea, a reminiscence of the last Perkins dinner,
+and conclusive evidence that at times Jane was not as careful in the
+washing of her china as she might have been.
+
+It would be futile and useless for me to attempt to describe the emotions
+of Thaddeus.  I fancy a large enough number of us having been through
+similar experiences to comprehend the man’s mortification and his inward
+wrath.  It was too great to find suitable expression at the moment.
+Nothing short of the absolute destruction of the cup and the annihilation
+of Jane could have adequately expressed Perkins’s true feelings.  He was
+not by nature, however, a scene-maker—it would have been better if he had
+been—so he said nothing, abiding by his rule, which seemed to be that the
+man of the house would do better to reprehend the short-comings of a
+delinquent servant by blowing up his wife rather than by going direct to
+the core of the trouble and reading the maid a lecture.  A great many men
+adopt this same method.  I do.  It is the easiest, though it is possibly
+prompted by that cowardice which is latent with us all.  I never in my
+life have discharged more than one servant, and I not only did not do it
+gracefully, but discharged the wrong one; since which time I have left
+all that sort of work to others more competent than I.  Perkins’s method
+was precisely thus.
+
+“I’m not going to interfere,” was his invariable remark in cases of the
+kind under discussion; which was unwise, for if he had even scolded a
+servant as he did his wife for the servant’s fault he might have secured
+better service sooner or later.
+
+Unfortunately, when Mrs. Perkins reached home that night she was so very
+tired with her exertions in the shops that Thaddeus hadn’t the heart to
+tell her what had happened, and when morning came the episode was
+forgotten.  When it did recur to his mind it so happened that Mrs.
+Perkins was out of reach.  The result was that a month had passed before
+Mrs. Perkins cane into possession of the facts, and it was then, of
+course, too late to mention it to Jane.
+
+“You should have given her a good talking to at the time,” said Mrs.
+Perkins.  “It’s awful!  I don’t know what has got into Jane.  My best
+table-cloth has got a great hole in it, and she is very careless with the
+silver.  My fruit-knife last night was not clean.”
+
+“I suppose _you_ spoke to her about that?” said Perkins, smiling.
+
+“Not exactly; I sent for another, and handed her the dirty one,” returned
+Mrs. Perkins.  “I guess she felt all that I could have said.”
+
+And time went on, and Jane continued to decay.  She pulled corks from
+olive-bottles with the carving-fork prongs and bent them backwards.  She
+developed a habit of going out and leaving her work undone.  The powdered
+sugar was allowed to resolve itself into small, hard, pill-shaped lumps
+of various sizes.  Breakfast had a way of being served cold.  The coffee
+was at times merely tepid; in short, it seemed as if she really ought to
+be discharged; but then there was invariably some reason for postponing
+the fatal hour.  Either her kindness to the children or a week or two of
+the old-time efficiency, her unyielding civility, her scrupulous honesty,
+her willing acquiescence in any new duty imposed, an impression that she
+was suffering, any one or all of these reasons kept her on in her place
+until she became so much a fixture in the household, so much one of the
+family, that the idea of getting rid of her seemed beyond the possibility
+of realization.  That the axe should fall her employers knew well, and
+many a resolve was taken that at the end of the season she should go, yet
+neither Mrs. Perkins nor her husband liked to tell her so.  Her good
+points were still too potent, although none could deny that all
+confidence in her efficiency was shattered past repair.  The situation
+finally reached a point where it inspired reflections of a more or less
+humorous order.
+
+“I tell you what I think,” said Thaddeus one evening, after a
+particularly flagrant breach on Jane’s part, involving a streak of
+cranberry sauce across a supposititiously clean plate: “you won’t
+discharge her, Bess, and I won’t; suppose we send for Mr. Burke, and get
+him to do it.”
+
+Mr. Burke was the one reliable man in town.  It didn’t make much
+difference what the Perkinses wanted done, they generally sent for Mr.
+Burke to do it, largely because when he attempted a commission he saw it
+through.  A carpenter and builder by trade, he had for many years looked
+after the repairs needful to the Perkins’ dwelling; he had come often
+between Thaddeus and unskilled labor; he had made bookcases which were
+dreams of convenience and sufficiently pleasing to the eye; he had “fixed
+up” Mrs. Perkins’s garden; he had supplied the family with a new gardener
+when the old one had taken on habits of drink, which destroyed not only
+himself but the cabbages; he had kept an eye on the plumbers; he had put
+up, taken down, and repaired awnings—in short, as Perkins said, he was a
+“Universal.”  Once, when a delicate piece of bric-à-brac had been broken
+and the china-mender asserted that it could not be mended, Perkins had
+said, “See if Burke can’t fix it,” and Burke had fixed it; and as final
+tribute to this wonder, Perkins had said, in suffering:
+
+“My dear, I’m afraid I have appendicitis.  Send for Mr. Burke.”
+
+“Mr. Burke!” echoed his wife.
+
+“Yes, Mr. Burke,” moaned the sufferer.  “If my vermiform appendix is to
+be removed, I’d rather have Mr. Burke do it with a chisel and saw than
+any surgeon I know; and I won’t take ether either, because it is such a
+satisfaction to see him work.”
+
+So, when this happy pair of house-holders had reached what might be
+described as the grand climateric of their patience, and it was finally
+decided that Jane’s usefulness was a thing of the past, and utterly
+beyond redemption, Thaddeus naturally suggested turning to his faithful
+friend, Mr. Burke, to rid them of their woes, and, indeed, but for Jane’s
+own intervention, I fear that course would have proved the sole
+alternative to her becoming an irremovable fixture in the household.  But
+it was Jane herself who solved the problem.
+
+It was two days after the cranberry episode that the solution came, and
+it was in this wise:
+
+“Did ye send for me?” Jane asked, suddenly materializing in Mrs.
+Perkins’s room.
+
+“No, Jane, I haven’t; why?”
+
+The girl began to shed tears.
+
+“Because—you’d ought to have, ma’am.  I know well enough that I ain’t
+satisfactory to you,” she returned, her voice quivering, “and I can’t be,
+and I know you want me to go—and I—I’ve come to give you notice.”
+
+Then Mrs. Perkins looked at Jane with sorrow on her countenance, for she
+had acquired an affection for her which the maid’s delinquencies had not
+been able to efface.
+
+“Can’t you try and do better?” she asked.
+
+“No, ma’am,” returned Jane.  “Not with the system—never.  Mr. Perkins is
+too easy, and you do be so soft-hearted it don’t keep a girl up to her
+work.  When I first come here, ma’am, not knowin’ ye well, I was afraid
+to be anything but what was right, but the way you took accidents, and a
+bit of a shortcomin’ once in a while, sort of took away my fear, and I’ve
+been goin’ down hill ever since.  Servant-girls is only human, Mrs.
+Perkins.”
+
+Mrs. Perkins looked at Jane inquiringly.
+
+“We needs to be kept up to our work just as much as anybody else, and
+when a lady like yourself is too easy, it gets a girl into bad habits,
+and occasionally it does us good if the gentleman of the house will swear
+at us, Mrs. Perkins, and sort of scare us, so it does.  It was that that
+was the making of me.  The last place I was in, ma’am, I was so afraid of
+both the missus and the gentleman that I didn’t dare to be careless; and
+I didn’t dare be careless with you until I found you all the time
+a-smilin’, whatever went wrong, and Mr. Perkins never sayin’ a word,
+whether the dishes come to the table clean or not.”
+
+“Well, Jane,” said Mrs. Perkins, somewhat carried away by this course of
+reasoning, “you haven’t been what we hoped—there is no denying that; but
+knowing that you were disappointing us, why couldn’t you have made a
+special effort?”
+
+“Oh, Mrs. Perkins,” sobbed the poor woman, “you don’t understand.  We’re
+all disappointin’ to them we loves, but—it’s them we fear—”
+
+“Then why aren’t you afraid of us?”
+
+Jane laughed through her tears.  The idea was preposterous.
+
+“Afraid of you and Mr. Perkins?  Ah!” she said, sadly, “if I only could
+be—but I can’t.  Why, Mrs. Perkins, if Mr. Perkins should come in here
+now and swear at me the way Mr. Barley did when I worked there, I’d know
+he was only puttin’ it on, and that inside he’d be laughin’ at me.  No,
+ma’am, it’s no use.  I feel that I must go, or I’ll be forever ruined.
+It was the cranberry showed me; a girl had ought to be discharged for
+that.  Dirty dinner plates isn’t excusable, and yet neither of you said a
+word, and next week it’ll be the same way—so I’m goin’.  You won’t send
+me off, so I’ve got to do it myself.”
+
+“Very well, Jane,” said Mrs. Perkins; “if that is the way you feel about
+it we’ll have to part, I suppose.  I am sorry, but—”
+
+The sentence was not finished, for Jane rushed weeping from the room, and
+within a few days, her place having been filled, the house knew her no
+more, except as an occasional visitor, ostensibly to see the children.
+Later she got a place to her satisfaction, and one night the Perkins were
+invited to dine with Jane’s new employers.  They went and found their
+old-time “butler” at the very zenith of her powers.  She served the
+dinner as she had never served one in her palmiest days in the Perkins’s
+dining-room; and when all was over, and when Mrs. Perkins went up-stairs
+to don her wrap to return home, she found Jane above waiting to help her.
+
+“I am glad to see you so happy, Jane,” she said, as the girl held her
+cloak.
+
+“Ah, ma’am, I’m not very happy.”
+
+“You ought to be, here.  Your work to-night was perfect.”
+
+“Yes,” said Jane, “it had to be, for”—here her voice fell to a whisper—“I
+don’t dare let it be different, ma’am.  Mrs. Harkins is a regular divvle,
+and the ould gentleman—well, ma’am, he do swear finer ’n any gentleman I
+ever met.  It’s just the place for me.”
+
+And Jane sighed as her old mistress left her.
+
+“Wasn’t she great, Bess?” said Thaddeus, on the way home.
+
+“She was, indeed,” replied Mrs. Perkins, with a smile.  “It’s a pity I’m
+not a divvle.”
+
+Thaddeus laughed.  “That’s so,” he said; “or that I never learned to
+swear like a gentleman, eh?”
+
+
+
+
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