Paste Jewels | Page 6

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 be 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 wore 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