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“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 excessively reticent. When Mrs. Perkins, kneeling before Master Harry, asked him the wholly unnecessary question, “Why, is this Harry?” he refused wholly to reply; nor could the diminutive Jennie be induced to say anything but “Yumps” in response to a similar question put to her, “Yumps” being, it is to be presumed, a juvenilism for “Yes, ma’am.” Hence it was that the object-lesson did not begin to develop until breakfast on Sunday morning. The first step in the lesson was taken at that important meal, when Master Harry observed, in stentorian yet sweetly soprano tones:

“Hi wants a glarse o’ milk.”

To which his nurse, standing behind his chair to relieve the Perkinses’ maid of the necessity of looking after the Bradley hopefuls, replied:

“‘Ush, ‘Arry, ‘ush! Wite till yer arsked.”

Mrs. Bradley nodded approval to Harriet, and observed quietly to Mrs. Perkins that Harriet was such a treasure; she kept the children so well in subjection.

The incident passed without making any impression upon the minds of any but Thaddeus junior, who, taking his cue from Harry, vociferously asserted that he, too, wished a glass of milk, and in such terms as made the assertion tantamount to an ultimatum.

Then Miss Jennie seemed to think it was her turn.

“Hi doan’t care fer stike. Hi wants chickin,” said she. “I’n’t there goin’ ter be no kikes?”

Mrs. Perkins laughed, though I strongly suspect that Thaddeus junior would have been sent from the table had he ventured to express a similar sentiment. Mrs. Bradley blushed; Bradley looked severe; Perkins had that expression which all parents have when other people’s children are involved, and which implies the thought, “If you were mine there’d be trouble; but since you are not mine, how cunning you are!” But Harriet, the nurse, met the problem. She said: