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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Paste Jewels, by John Kendrick Bangs
+(#7 in our series by John Kendrick Bangs)
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Paste Jewels
+
+Author: John Kendrick Bangs
+
+Release Date: November 20, 2004  [eBook #4930]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PASTE JEWELS***
+
+
+
+Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk, from the
+1897 Harper and Brothers edition.
+
+
+
+
+PASTE JEWELS
+
+
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+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 regime, 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
+regime 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 what, 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 melee.  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 downstairs 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 puree--celery puree, 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 consomme," 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 entree 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 puree, 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
+portieres 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 puree was superior to anything
+Thaddeus had ever eaten in the line of soups in his life--only it
+was lobster puree, and ten times better than Ellen's general run of
+celery puree.  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 puree, Mrs.
+Perkins," said Mr. Phillips.  "It is delicious."
+
+"Yes," put in Thaddeus.  "But you ought to taste her celery puree.
+She is undoubtedly great on purees."
+
+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?"
+
+"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'hote 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
+downstairs 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 downstairs 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 puree 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 bearnaise 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 edition 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-a-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-a-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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