Unexpected Pomp at the Perkins's - Page 2

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