"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?"

THE END