Paste Jewels

“Because, Teddy, she was too perfect to be in her right mind.”

And Thaddeus, after thinking it all over, was inclined to believe that Bessie was in the right.

“Yes, Bess, she was perfect—perfect in the way she did her work, perfect in the way she smashed things, and nowhere did she more successfully show the thoroughness with which she did everything than when it came to removing the buttons from my vest.  Isn’t it too bad that the only perfect servant that ever lived should turn out to be a hopeless maniac?  But I must hurry off, or I’ll miss my train.”

“You are not going down to town to-day?” asked Bessie.

“To-day, above all other days, am I going down,” returned Thaddeus.  “I am enough of a barbarian to be unwilling to lose the chance of seeing Bradley, and asking him how he and his jewel get along.”

“Thaddeus!”

“Why not, my dear?”

“It would be too mean for anything.”

“Well, perhaps you are right.  I guess I won’t.  But he has rubbed it into me so much about our domestics that I hate to lose the chance to hit back.”

“Has he?” said Bessie, her face flushing indignantly, and, it may be added, becomingly.  “In that case, perhaps, you might—ha! ha!—perhaps you might telegraph and ask him.”

And Thaddeus did so.  As yet he has received no reply.

UNEXPECTED POMP AT THE PERKINS’S

“My dear,” said Thaddeus, one night, as he and Mrs. Perkins entered the library after dinner, “that was a very good dinner to-night.  Don’t you think so?”

“All except the salmon,” said Bessie, with a smile.

“Salmon?” echoed Thaddeus.  “Salmon?  I did not see any salmon.”

“No,” said Bessie, “that was just the trouble.  It didn’t come up, although it was in the house before dinner, I’m certain.  I saw it arrive.”

“Ellen couldn’t have known you intended it for dinner,” said Thaddeus.

“Yes, she knew it was for dinner,” returned Bessie, “but she made a mistake as to whose dinner it was for.  She supposed it was bought for the kitchen-table, and when I went down-stairs to inquire about it a few minutes ago it was fulfilling its assumed mission nobly.  There wasn’t much left but the tail and one fin.”

“Well!” ejaculated Thaddeus, “I call that a pretty cool proceeding.  Did you give her a talking to?”

“No,” Bessie replied, shortly; “I despise a domestic fuss, so I pretended I’d gone down to talk about breakfast.  We’ll have breakfast an hour or two earlier to-morrow, dear.”

“What’s that for?” queried Thaddeus, his eyes open wide with astonishment.  “You are not going shopping, are you?”

“No, Teddy, I’m not; but when I got down-stairs and realized that Ellen had made the natural mistake of supposing the fish was for the down-stairs dinner, this being Friday, I had to think of something to say, and nothing would come except that we wanted breakfast at seven instead of at eight.  It doesn’t do to have servants suspect you of spying upon them, nor is it wise ever to appear flustered—so mamma says—in their presence.  I avoided both by making Ellen believe I’d come down to order an early breakfast.”

“You are a great Bessie,” said Thaddeus, with a laugh.  “I admire you more than ever, my dear, and to prove it I’d get up to breakfast if you’d ordered it at 1 A.M.”

“You’d be more likely to stay up to it,” said Bessie, “and then go to bed after it.”

“There’s your Napoleonic mind again,” said Thaddeus.  “I should never have thought of that way out of it.  But, Bess,” he continued, “when I was praising to-night’s dinner I had a special object in view.  I think Ellen cooks well enough now to warrant us in giving a dinner, don’t you?”

“Well, it all depends on what we have for dinner,” said Bessie.  “Ellen’s biscuits are atrocious, I think, and you know how lumpy the oatmeal always is.”

“Suppose we try giving a dinner with the oatmeal and biscuit courses left out?” suggested Thaddeus, with a grin.

Bessie’s eyes twinkled.  “You make very bright after-dinner speeches, Teddy,” she said.  “I don’t see why we can’t have a dinner with nothing but pretty china, your sparkling conversation, and a few flowers strewn about.  It would be particularly satisfactory to me.”

“They’re not all angels like you, my dear,” Thaddeus returned.  “There’s Bradley, for instance.  He’d die of starvation before we got to the second course in a dinner of that kind, and if there is any one thing that can cast a gloom over a dinner, it is to have one of the guests die of starvation right in the middle of it.”

“Mr. Bradley would never do so ungentlemanly a thing,” said Bessie, laughing heartily.  “He is too considerate a man for that; he’d starve in silence and without ostentation.”

“Why this sudden access of confidence in Bradley?” queried Thaddeus.  “I thought you didn’t like him?”

“Neither I did, until that Sunday he spent with us,” Bessie answered.  “I’ve admired him intensely ever since.  Don’t you remember, we had lemon pie for dinner—one I made myself?”

“Yes, I remember,” said Thaddeus; “but I fail to see the connection between lemon pie and Bradley.  Bradley is not sour or crusty.”

“You wouldn’t have failed to see if you’d watched Mr. Bradley at dinner,” retorted Bessie.  “He ate two pieces of it.”

“And just because a man eats two pieces of lemon pie prepared by your own fair hands you whirl about, and, from utterly disliking him, call him, upon the whole, one of the most admirable products of the human race?” said Thaddeus.

“Not at all,” Bessie replied, with a broad smile; “but I did admire the spirit and politeness of the man.  On our way home from church in the morning we were talking about the good times children have on their little picnics, and Mr. Bradley said he never enjoyed a picnic in his life, because every one he had ever gone to was ruined by the baleful influence of lemon pie.”

Thaddeus laughed.  “Then he didn’t like lemon pie?” he asked.

“No, he hated it,” said Bessie, joining in the laugh.  “He added that the original receipt for it came out of Pandora’s box.”

“Poor Bradley!” cried Thaddeus, throwing his head back in a paroxysm of mirth.  “Hated pie—declared his feelings—and then to be confronted by it at dinner.”

“He behaved nobly,” said Bessie.  “Ate his first piece like a man, and then called for a second, like a hero, when you remarked that it was of my make.”

“You ought to have told him it wasn’t necessary, Bess,” said Thaddeus.

“I felt that way myself at first,” Bessie explained; “but then I thought I wouldn’t let him know I remembered what he had said.”

“I fancy that was better,” said Thaddeus.  “But about that dinner.  What do you say to our inviting the Bradleys, Mr. and Mrs. Phillips, the Robinsons, and the Twinings?”

“How many does that make?  Eight besides ourselves?” asked Bessie, counting upon her fingers.

“Yes—ten altogether,” said Thaddeus.

“It can’t be done, dear,” said Bessie.  “We have only eight fruit plates.”

“Can’t you and I go without fruit?” Thaddeus asked.

“Not very well,” laughed Bessie.  “It would never do.”

“They might think the fruit was poisoned if we did, eh?” suggested Thaddeus.

“Besides, Mary never could serve dinner for ten; eight is her number.  Last time we had ten people, don’t you remember, she dropped a tray full of dishes, and poured the claret into the champagne glasses?”