this morning; but Jane is teary, anyhow."

"It wouldn't do to have Ellen oily and Jane watery," Thaddeus
answered. "They'd mix worse than ever then. We're in pretty good
luck as it is."

"I think so, too, Teddy," Bessie replied; "but Jane is so foolish.
She might have known better than to send the square platter down to
Ellen for an omelet, when the omelet was five times as long as it
was broad."

"You always had square omelets, though, at your house--that is,
whenever I was there you had," said Thaddeus. "And I suppose Jane's
notion is that as things happened under your mother's regime, so
they ought to happen here."

"Possibly that was her notion," replied Bessie; "but, then, in your
family the omelets were oblong, and Ellen is too old to depart from
her traditions. Old people get set in their ways, and as long as
results are satisfactory, we ought not to be captious about
methods."

"No, indeed, we shouldn't," smiled Thaddeus; "but I don't want you
to give in to Ellen to too great an extent, my dear. This is your
home, and not my mother's, and your ways must be the ways of the
house."

"Ellen is all right," returned Bessie, "and I am so delighted to
have her, because, you know, Teddy dear, she knows what you like
even better, perhaps, than I do--naturally so, having grown up in
your family."

"Reverse that, my dear. Our family grew up on Ellen. She set the
culinary pace at home. Mother always let her have her own way, and
it may be she is a little spoiled."

"Do you know, Teddy, I wonder that, having had Ellen for so many
years, your mother was willing to give her up."

"Oh, I can explain that," Thaddeus answered. "I'm the youngest, you
know; the rest of the family were old enough to be weaned. Besides,
father was getting old, and he had a notion that the comforts of a
hotel were preferable to the discomforts of house-keeping. Father
likes to eat meals at all hours, and the annunciator system of hotel
life, by which you can summon anything in an instant, from a shower-
bath to a feast of terrapin, was rather pleasing to him. He was
always an admirer of the tales of the genii, and he regards the
electric button in a well-appointed hotel as the nearest approach to
the famous Aladdin lamp known to science. You press the button, and
your genii do the rest."

"But a hotel isn't home," said Bessie.

"A hotel isn't this home," answered Thaddeus. "Love in a cottage
for me; but, Bessie, perhap