adopt this same method. I do. It is the easiest,
though it is possibly prompted by that cowardice which is latent
with us all. I never in my life have discharged more than one
servant, and I not only did not do it gracefully, but discharged the
wrong one; since which time I have left all that sort of work to
others more competent than I. Perkins's method was precisely thus.

"I'm not going to interfere," was his invariable remark in cases of
the kind under discussion; which was unwise, for if he had even
scolded a servant as he did his wife for the servant's fault he
might have secured better service sooner or later.

Unfortunately, when Mrs. Perkins reached home that night she was so
very tired with her exertions in the shops that Thaddeus hadn't the
heart to tell her what had happened, and when morning came the
episode was forgotten. When it did recur to his mind it so happened
that Mrs. Perkins was out of reach. The result was that a month had
passed before Mrs. Perkins cane into possession of the facts, and it
was then, of course, too late to mention it to Jane.

"You should have given her a good talking to at the time," said Mrs.
Perkins. "It's awful! I don't know what has got into Jane. My
best table-cloth has got a great hole in it, and she is very
careless with the silver. My fruit-knife last night was not clean."

"I suppose YOU spoke to her about that?" said Perkins, smiling.

"Not exactly; I sent for another, and handed her the dirty one,"
returned Mrs. Perkins. "I guess she felt all that I could have
said."

And time went on, and Jane continued to decay. She pulled corks
from olive-bottles with the carving-fork prongs and bent them
backwards. She developed a habit of going out and leaving her work
undone. The powdered sugar was allowed to resolve itself into
small, hard, pill-shaped lumps of various sizes. Breakfast had a
way of being served cold. The coffee was at times merely tepid; in
short, it seemed as if she really ought to be discharged; but then
there was invariably some reason for postponing the fatal hour.
Either her kindness to the children or a week or two of the old-time
efficiency, her unyielding civility, her scrupulous honesty, her
willing acquiescence in any new duty imposed, an impression that she
was suffering, any one or all of these reasons kept her on in her
place until she became so much a fixture in the household, so much
one of the family, that the idea of gett