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:

"Popper's goin' ter have stike, Jinnie; m'yby Mr. Perkins'll give

yer lots o' gryvy. Hit i'n't time fer the kikes."

Perhaps I ought to say to those who have not studied dialect as "she

is spoke" that the word m'yby is the Seven Dials idiom for maybe,

itself more or less an Americanism, signifying "perhaps," while

"kikes" is a controvertible term for cakes.

After breakfast, as a matter of course, the senior members of both

families attended divine service, then came dinner, and after dinner

the usual matching of the children began. The hopefuls of Perkins

were matched against the scions of Bradley. All four were brought

downstairs and into the parental presence in the library.

"Your Harry is a fine fellow, Mrs. Bradley," said Thaddeus.

"Yes, we think Harry is a very nice boy," returned Mrs. Bradley,

with a fond glance at the youth.

"Wot djer si about me, mar?" asked Harry.

"Nothing, dear," replied Mrs. Bradley, raising her eyebrows

reprovingly.

"Yes, yer did, too," retorted Harry. "Yer said as 'ow hi were a

good boy."

"Well, 'e i'n't, then," interjected Jennie. "'E's a bloomin' mean

un. 'E took a knoife an' cut open me doll."

"'Ush, Jinnie, 'ush!" put in the nurse. "Don't yer tell tiles on

'Arry. 'E didn't mean ter 'urt yer doll. 'Twas a haxident."

"No, 'twasn't a haxident," said Jennie. "'E done it a-purpice."

"Well, wot if hi did?" retorted Harry. "Didn't yer pull the tile

off me rockin'-'orse?"

"Well, never mind," said Bradley, seeing how strained things were

getting. "Don't quarrel about it now. It's all done and gone, and

I dare say you were both a little to blame."

"'Hi war'n't!" said Harry, and then the subject was dropped. The

children romped in and out through the library and halls for some

time, and the Bradleys and Perkinses compared notes on various

points of interest to both. After a while they again reverted to

the subject of their children.

"Does Harry go to school?" asked Bessie.

"No, we think he's too young yet," returned Mrs. Bradley. "He

learns a little of something every day from Harriet, who is really a

very superior girl. She is a good servant. She hasn't been in this

country very long, and is English to the core, as you've probably

noticed, not only in her way of comporting herself, but in her

accent."

"Yes, I've observed it," said Bessie. "What does she teach him?"

"Oh, she tells him stories that are more or less instructive, and

she reads to him. She's taught him one or two pretty little songs--

ballads, you know--too. Harry has a sweet little voice. Harry,

dear, won't you sing that song about Mrs. Henry Hawkins for mamma?"

"Don't warn'ter," said Harry. "Hi'm sick o' that bloomin' old

song."

"Seems to me I've heard it," said Thaddeus. "As I remember it,

Harry, it was very pretty."

"It is," said Bradley. "It's the one you mean--'Oh, 'Lizer! dear

'Lizer! Mrs. 'Ennery 'Awkins.' Harry sings it well, too; but I

say, Thad, you ought to hear the nurse sing it. It's great."

"I should think it might be."

"She has the accent down fine, you know."

"Sort of born to it, eh?"

"Yes; you can't cultivate that accent and get it just right."

"I'll do 'Dear Old Dutch' for yer," suggested Harry. "Hi likes thet

better 'n 'Mrs. 'Awkins.'"

So Harry deserted "Mrs. 'Awkins" and sang that other pathetic

coster-ballad, "Dear Old Dutch," and, to the credit of Harriet, the

nurse, it must be said that he was marvellously well instructed. It

could not have been done better had the small vocalist been the own

son of a London coster-monger instead of the scion of an American

family of refinement.

Thus the day passed. Jennie proved herself quite as proficient in

the dialect of Seven Dials as was Harry, or even Harriet, and when

she consented to stand on a chair and recite a few nursery rhymes,

there was not an unnoticed "h" that she did not, sooner or later,

pick up and attach to some other word to which it was not related,

as she went along.

In short, as far as their speech was concerned, thanks to

association with Harriet, Jennie and Harry were as perfect little

cockneys as ever ignored an aspirate.

The visit of the Bradleys, like all other things, came to an end,

and Bessie, Thaddeus, and the children were once more left to

themselves. Teddy junior, it was observed, after his day with

Harry, developed a slight tendency to misplace the letter "h" in his

conversation, but it was soon corrected, and things ran smoothly as

of yore. Only--the Only being the natural sequence of the But

referred to some time since--Mr. and Mrs. Perkins changed their

minds about the French nurse, and it came about in this way:

"Thaddeus," said Bessie, after the Bradleys had departed, "what is

the tile of a rockin'-'orse?"

"I don't know. Why?" asked Thaddeus.

"Why, don't you remember," she said, "young Harry Bradley accused

Jennie of pulling out the tile of his rockin'-'orse?"

"Oh yes! Ha, ha!" laughed Thaddeus. "So she did. I know now.

Tile is cockney for tail."

"Did you notice the accent those children had?"

"Yes."

"All got from the nurse, too?"

"True."

"Ah, Teddy, what do you think of our getting a French maid, after

all? Don't you think that we'd run a great risk?"

"Of what?"

"Of having Ted speak--er--cockney French."

"H'm--yes. Very likely," said Thaddeus. "I'd thought of that

myself, and, I guess, perhaps we'd better stick to Irish."

"So do I. We can correct any tendency to a brogue, don't you

think?"

"Certainly," said Thaddeus. "Or, if we couldn't, it wouldn't be

fatal to the boy's prospects. It might even help him if he--"

"Help him? If what?"

"If he ever went into polities," said Perkins.

And that was the object-lesson which a kindly fate gave to the

Perkinses in time to prevent their engaging a French maid for the

children.

As to its value as a lesson, as to the value of its results, those

who are familiar with French as spoken by nurse-instructed youths

can best judge.

I am not unduly familiar with that or any other kind of French, but

I have ideas in the matter.