s you--perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea
for you to speak to Jane and Ellen this morning about their
differences. I am an hour late now."

Then Thaddeus kissed Bessie, and went down to business.

On Thaddeus's departure Bessie's cheerfulness also deserted her, and
for the first time in her life she felt that it would do her good if
she could fly out at somebody--somebody, however, who was not
endeared to the heart of Thaddeus, or too intimately related to her
own family, which left no one but Norah upon whom to vent the
displeasure that she felt. Norah was, therefore, sought out, and
requested rather peremptorily to say how long it had been since she
had dusted the parlor; to which Norah was able truthfully to answer,
"This mornin', mim." Whereupon Bessie's desire to be disagreeable
departed, and saying that Norah could now clean the second-story
front-room windows, she withdrew to her own snug sewing-room until
luncheon should be served. She was just a trifle put out with Norah
for being so efficient. There is nothing so affronting to a young
house-keeper as the discovery that the inherited family jewels, upon
whom much reliance has been placed, are as paste alongside of the
newly acquired bauble from whom little was expected. It was almost
unkind in Norah, Bessie thought, to be so impeccably conscientious
when Jane and Ellen were developing eccentricities; but there was
the consoling thought that when they had all been together a month
or two longer, their eccentricities would so shape themselves that
they would fit into one another, and ultimately bind the little
domestic structure more firmly together.

"Perhaps if I let them alone," Bessie said to herself, "they'll
forget their differences more quickly. I guess, on the whole, I
will say nothing about it."

That night, when Thaddeus came home, the first thing he said to his
wife was: "Well, I suppose you were awfully firm this morning, eh?
Went down into the kitchen and roared like a little tyrant, eh? I
really was afraid to read the paper on the way home. Didn't know
but what I'd read of a 'Horrid Accident in High Life. Mrs. Thaddeus
Perkins's Endeavor to Maintain Discipline in the Household Results
Fatally. Two Old Family Servants Instantly Killed, and Three of the
Kitchen Table Legs Broken by a Domestic Explosion!'"

"Be serious, Thaddeus," said Bessie.

And Thaddeus became instantly serious. "They--they haven't left us,
have they?" he whispe