The Christmas Gifts of Thaddeus - Page 2

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