arn French without any
forcing."

"Good scheme," said Thaddeus. "I approve of that. We might learn a
little French from her ourselves, too."

"That's what I thought," said Bessie and that point was decided.
The new nurse was to be French, and the happy parents drew beatific
visions of the ease with which they should some day cope with
Parisian hotel-keepers and others in that longed-for period when
they should find themselves able, financially, to visit the French
capital.

But--

Ah! Those buts that come into our lives! Conjunctions they are
called! Are they not rather terminals? Are they not the
forerunners of chaos in the best-laid plans of mankind? If for
every "but" that destroys our plan of action there were ready always
some better-succeeding plan, then might their conjunctive force seem
more potent; as life goes, however, unhappily, they are not always
so provided, and the English "but" takes on its Gallic significance,
which leads the Frenchman to define it as meaning "the end."

There was an object-lesson in store for the Perkinses.

On the Sunday following the discussion with which this story opens,
the Perkinses, always hospitable, though distinctly unsociable so
far as the returning of visits went, received a visit from their
friends the Bradleys. Ordinarily a visit from one's town friends is
no very great undertaking for a suburban host or hostess, but when
the town friends have children from whom they are inseparable, and
those children have nurses who, whithersoever the children go, go
there also, such a visit takes on proportions the stupendousness of
which I, being myself a suburban entertainer, would prefer not to
discuss, fearing lest some of my friends with families, recalling
these words, might consider my remarks of a personal nature. Let me
be content with saying, therefore, that when the Bradleys, Mr. and
Mrs., plus Master and Miss, plus Harriet, the English nurse, came to
visit the Perkins homestead that Sunday, it was a momentous occasion
for the host and hostess, and, furthermore, like many another
momentous occasion, was far-reaching in its results.

In short, it provided the Perkins family with that object-lesson to
which I have already alluded.

The Bradleys arrived on Sunday night, and as they came late little
Harry Bradley and the still smaller Jennie Bradley were tired, and
hence not at all responsive to the welcomes of the Perkinses, large
or small. They were exce