Paste Jewels - John Kendrick Bangs (popular books to read txt) 📗

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