and would like employment at nominal wages if he
could get a home with it. We were just getting rid of our waitress,
and so I offered Grimmins thirty a month, board, lodging, and
clothes. He came on; I gave him one of my old dress-suits, set him
to work, and there you are."

"I thought you said a minute ago Mrs. Perkins got him?" said
Bradley, who is one of those disagreeable men with a memory.

"I thought you were talking about the cook," said Thaddeus,
uneasily. "Weren't you talking about the cook?"

"No; but we ought to have been," said Phillips, with enthusiasm.
"She's the queen of cooks. What do you pay her?"

"Sixteen," said Thaddeus, glad to get back on the solid ground of
truth once more.

"What?" cried Phillips. "Sixteen, and can cook like that? Take me
down and introduce me, will you, Perkins? I'd like to offer her
seventeen to come and cook for me."

"Let's join the ladies," said Thaddeus, abruptly. "There's no use
of our wasting our sweetness upon each other."

If the head of the house had expected to be relieved from his
unfortunate embarrassments by joining the ladies, he was doomed to
bitter disappointment, for the conversation abandoned at the table
was resumed in the drawing-room. The dinner had been too much of a
success to be forgotten readily.

Thaddeus's troubles were set going again when he overheard Phillips
saying to Bessie, "Thaddeus has been telling us the remarkable story
of Grimmins."

Nor were his woes lightened any when he caught Bessie's reply:
"Indeed? What story is that?"

"Why, the story of the butler--Grimmins, you know. How you came to
get him, and all that," said Phillips. "Really, you are to be
congratulated."

"I am glad to know you feel that way," said Bessie, simply, with a
glance at Thaddeus which was full of wonderment.

"He is a treasure," said Bradley; "but your cook is a whole chestful
of treasures. And how fortunate you and Thaddeus are! The idea of
there being anywhere in the world a person of such ability in her
vocation, and so poor a notion of her worth!"

Thaddeus breathed again, now that the cook was under discussion. He
knew all about her.

"Yes, indeed," said Bessie. "He did well."

"I mean the cook," returned Bradley. "You mean she did well, don't
you?"

What Bessie would have answered, or what Thaddeus would have done
next if the conversation had been continued, can be a matter of
unprofitable speculation only, for at this