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 whispered, in an awe-struck tone.

“No.  I—­I thought I’d let them fight it out between themselves,” replied Bessie.  “You see, Thaddeus, servants are queer, and do not like to have their differences settled by others than themselves.  It’ll work out all right, if we let them alone.”

“I don’t know but that you are right,” said Thaddeus, after a few moments of thought.  “They’re both sensible girls, and capable of fighting their own battles.  Let’s have dinner.  I’m hungry as a bear.”