“John is very faithful with the furnace,” said Bessie.  “He never lets it go down.  Why, day before yesterday I turned off every register in the house, and even then had to open all the windows to keep from suffocating.”

“But that wasn’t all John, my dear,” said Thaddeus.  “The Weather Bureau had something to do with it.  It was a warm day for this season of the year, anyhow.  If John could combine the two businesses of selling coal and feeding furnaces, I think he would become a millionaire.  And, by-the-way, I think you ought to speak to him, Bess, about the windows.  Since you gave him the work of window-cleaning to do, it is evident that he thinks I have nothing to say in the matter, for he persistently ignores my requests that he clean them in squares as they are made, and not rub up a little circle in the middle, so that they look like blocks of opalescent glass with plate-glass bulls’-eyes let into the centre.  Look at them now.”

“Dennis did that.  John had to go to Mount Vernon with his militia company to-day.”

“Dennis is well named, for his name is—­But never mind.  I’ll credit John with his twelfth day off in four weeks.”

From John to Bridget, in the matter of days off, was an easy step, though such was Bessie’s consummate diplomacy that Thaddeus would probably have continued in ignorance of the extent to which Bridget absented herself had they not both taken occasion one day to visit some relatives in Philadelphia, and on their return home at night found no dinner awaiting them.

“What’s the matter now?” asked Thaddeus, a little crossly, perhaps, for visiting relatives in Philadelphia irritated him—­possibly because he and they did not agree in politics, and their assumption that Thaddeus’s party was entirely made up of the ignorant and self-seeking was galling to him.  “Why isn’t dinner ready?”

“Mary says that an hour after we left cook got a telegram from New York saying that her brother was dying, and she had to go right off.”

“I thought that brother was dying last week?”

“No; that was her mother’s brother, he got well.  This is another person entirely.”

“Naturally,” snapped Thaddeus.  “But next time we get a cook let’s have one whose relatives are all dead, or in the old country, where they can’t be reached.  I’m tired of this business.”

“Well, you shouldn’t be cross with me about it, Thad,” said Bessie, with a teary look in her eyes.  “I have to put up with a great deal more of it than you have, only you never know of it.  Why, I’ve cooked one-half of my own luncheons in the last month.”

“And the dinners, too, I’ll wager,” growled Thaddeus.

“No; she’s always got home for dinner heretofore.”

“Well, we’ll keep a record-book for her, too, then.  And we’ll be generous with her.  We’ll allow her just as I was allowed in college—­twenty-five per cent. in cuts.  If she has twenty-five and a fifth per cent., she goes.”