or a slight nervousness of manner no one would have suspected
that he was not as he had always been. Indeed, to none of the
party, not even excepting his wife, did Thaddeus appear to be
anything but what he should be. But when, finally, the ladies had
withdrawn and the men remained over the coffee and cigars, he was
compelled to undergo a still severer test upon his loyalty to
Bessie, whose signal to him to accept all and say nothing he was so
nobly obeying.

Bradley began it. "I didn't know you'd changed from women to men
servants, Perkins?"

"Yes," said Thaddeus "we've changed."

"Rather good change, don't you think?"

"Splendid," said Phillips. "That fellow served the dinner like a
prince."

"I don't believe he's any more than a duke, though," said Bradley.
"His manner was quite ducal--in fact, too ducal, if Perkins will let
me criticise. He made me feel like a poor, miserable, red-blooded
son of the people. I wanted an olive, and, by Jove, I didn't dare
ask for it."

"That wasn't his fault," said Robinson, with a laugh. "You forget
that you live in a country where red blood is as good as blue.
Where did you get him, Thaddeus?"

Thaddeus looked like a rat in a corner with a row of cats to the
fore.

"Oh!--we--er--we got him from--dear me! I never can remember. Mrs.
Perkins can tell you, though," he stammered. "She looks after the
menagerie."

"What's his name?" asked Phillips.

Thaddeus's mind was a blank. He could not for the life of him think
what name a butler would be likely to have, but in a moment he
summoned up nerve enough to speak.

"Grimmins," he said, desperately.

"Sounds like a Dickens' character," said Robinson. "Does he cost
you very much?"

"Oh no--not so very much," said Thaddeus, whose case was now so
desperate that he resolved to put a stop to it all. Unfortunately,
his method of doing so was not by telling the truth, but by a flight
of fancy in which he felt he owed it to Bessie to indulge.

"No--he doesn't cost much," he repeated, boldly. "Fact is, he is a
man we've known for a great many years. He--er--he used to be
butler in my grandfather's house in Philadelphia, and--er--and I was
there a great deal of the time as a boy, and Grimmins and I were
great friends. When my grandfather died Grimmins disappeared, and
until last month I never heard a word of him, and then he wrote to
me stating that he was out of work and poor as a fifty-cent table-
d'hote dinner,