“What’s that for?” queried Thaddeus, his eyes open wide with astonishment. “You are not going shopping, are you?”
“No, Teddy, I’m not; but when I got down-stairs and realized that Ellen had made the natural mistake of supposing the fish was for the down-stairs dinner, this being Friday, I had to think of something to say, and nothing would come except that we wanted breakfast at seven instead of at eight. It doesn’t do to have servants suspect you of spying upon them, nor is it wise ever to appear flustered—so mamma says—in their presence. I avoided both by making Ellen believe I’d come down to order an early breakfast.”
“You are a great Bessie,” said Thaddeus, with a laugh. “I admire you more than ever, my dear, and to prove it I’d get up to breakfast if you’d ordered it at 1 A.M.”
“You’d be more likely to stay up to it,” said Bessie, “and then go to bed after it.”
“There’s your Napoleonic mind again,” said Thaddeus. “I should never have thought of that way out of it. But, Bess,” he continued, “when I was praising to-night’s dinner I had a special object in view. I think Ellen cooks well enough now to warrant us in giving a dinner, don’t you?”
“Well, it all depends on what we have for dinner,” said Bessie. “Ellen’s biscuits are atrocious, I think, and you know how lumpy the oatmeal always is.”
“Suppose we try giving a dinner with the oatmeal and biscuit courses left out?” suggested Thaddeus, with a grin.
Bessie’s eyes twinkled. “You make very bright after-dinner speeches, Teddy,” she said. “I don’t see why we can’t have a dinner with nothing but pretty china, your sparkling conversation, and a few flowers strewn about. It would be particularly satisfactory to me.”
“They’re not all angels like you, my dear,” Thaddeus returned. “There’s Bradley, for instance. He’d die of starvation before we got to the second course in a dinner of that kind, and if there is any one thing that can cast a gloom over a dinner, it is to have one of the guests die of starvation right in the middle of it.”
“Mr. Bradley would never do so ungentlemanly a thing,” said Bessie, laughing heartily. “He is too considerate a man for that; he’d starve in silence and without ostentation.”