“Never in the history of trunks was the act of unpacking done so quickly or so recklessly”“Never in the history of trunks was the act of unpacking done so quickly or so recklessly”
“You two go ahead,” she said. “The air will do you good, Laura. I have something I want to do,” and she ran back.
She entered the house, and looked out of the window until she saw the Fenelbys go into the Rankins’ and come out again, and saw them start to the station, but as soon as they were out of sight she dashed down the porch steps and threw open the lids of her trunks. Never in the history of trunks was the act of unpacking doneso quickly or so recklessly. She dived into the masses of fluffiness and emerged with great armfuls, and hurried them into the house, up the stairs, and into her closet, and was down again for another load. If she had been looting the trunks she could not have worked more hurriedly, or more energetically, and when the last armful had been carried up she slammed the lids and turned the keys, and sank in a graceful position on the lower porch step.
Mr. and Mrs. Fenelby returned with leisurely slowness of pace, the station loafer and man-of-little-work slouching along at a respectful distancebehind them. Kitty greeted them with a cheerful frankness of face. The man-of-little-work looked at the three big trunks as if their size was in some way a personal insult to him. He tried to assume the look of a man who had been cozened away from his needed rest on false pretences.
“I didn’t know as the trunks was as big as them,” he drawled.“If I’d knowed they was, I wouldn’t of walked all the way over here. Fifty cents ain’t no fair price for carryin’ three trunks, the size and heft of them, across—well, say this is a sixty foot street—say, eighty feet, and up a flight of stairs. I don’t say nothin’, but I’ll leave it to the ladies.”
“Fifty cents!” cried Kitty. “I should think not! Why, I didn’t imagine you would do it for less than a dollar. I mean to pay you a dollar.”
“That’s right,” said the man. “You see I have to walk all the way back to the station when I git through, too. My time goin’ and comin’ is worth something.”
“With all the grace of a Sandow”“With all the grace of a Sandow”
He bent down and took the largest trunk by one handle, to heave it to his back, and as he touched the handle the trunk almost arose into the air of its own accord. The man straightened up and looked at it, and astrange look passed across his face, but he closed his mouth and said nothing.
“Would you like a lift?” asked Mr. Fenelby.
“No,” said the man shortly. “I knowhowto handle trunks, I do,” and it certainly seemed that he did, for he swung it to his back with all the grace of a Sandow, and started off with it. Mr. Fenelby looked at him with surprise.
“Now, isn’t that one of the oddities of nature?” said Mr. Fenelby.“That fellow looks as if he had no strength at all, and see how he carries off that trunk as if there was not a thing in it. I suppose it is a knack he has. Now, see how hard it is for me merely to lift one end of this smallest one.”
But before he could touch it Kitty had grasped him by the arm.
“Oh, don’t try it!” she cried. “Please don’t! You might hurt your back.”
A few minutes before noon the next day Billy Fenelby dropped into Mr. Fenelby’s office in the city and the two men went out to lunch together. It would be hard to imagine two brothers more unlike than Thomas and William Fenelby, for if Thomas Fenelby was inclined to be small in stature and precise in his manner, William was all that his nickname of Billy implied, and was not so many years out of hiscollege foot-ball eleven, where he had won a place because of his size and strength. Billy Fenelby, after having been heroized by innumerable girls during his college years, had become definitely a man’s man, and was in the habit of saying that his girly-girl days were over, and that he would walk around a block any day to escape meeting a girl. He was not afraid of girls, and he did not hate them, but he simply held that they were not worth while. The truth was that he had been so petted and worshiped by them as a star foot-ball player that the attention they paid him, as an ordinary young man not unlike manyother young men out of college, seemed tame by comparison. No doubt he had come to believe, during his college days, that the only interesting thing a girl could do was to admire a man heartily, and in the manner that only foot-ball players and matinee idols are admired, so that now, when he had no particular claim to admiration, girls had become, so far as he was concerned, useless affairs.
“Now, about this girl-person that you have over at your house,” he said to his brother, when they were seated at their lunch, “what about her?”
“About her?” asked Mr. Fenelby. “How do you mean?”
“What about her?” repeated Billy. “You know how I feel about the girl-business. I suppose she is going to stay awhile?”
“Kitty? I think so. We want her to. But you needn’t bother about Kitty. She won’t bother you a bit. She’s the right sort, Billy. Not like Laura, of course, for I don’t believe there is another woman anywhere just like Laura, but Kitty is not the ordinary flighty girl. You should hear her appreciate Bobberts. She saw his good points, and remarked about them, at once, and the way she has caught the spirit of the Domestic Tariff that I was telling you about is fine! Mostgirls would have hemmed and hawed about it, but she didn’t! No, sir! She just saw what a fine idea it was, and when she saw that she couldn’t afford to have her three trunks brought into the house she proposed that she leave them at a neighbor’s. Did not make a single complaint. Don’t worry about Kitty.”
“That is all right about the tariff,” said Billy. “I can’t say I think much of that tariff idea myself, but so long as it is the family custom a guest couldn’t do any less than live up to it. But I don’t like the idea of having to spend a number of weeks in the same house with any girl. They are allbores, Tom, and I know it. A man can’t have any comfort when there is a girl in the house. And between you and me that Kitty girl looks like the kind that is sure to be always right at a fellow’s side. I was wondering if Laura would think it was all right if I stayed in town here?”
“No, she wouldn’t,” said Tom shortly. “She would be offended, and so would I. If you are going to let some nonsense about girls being a bore,—which is all foolishness—keep you away from the house, you had better—Why,” he added,“it is an insult to us—to Laura and me—just as if you said right out that the company we choose to ask to our home was not good enough for you to associate with. If you think our house is going to bore you—”
“Now, look here, old man,” said Billy, “I don’t mean that at all, and you know I don’t. I simply don’t like girls, and that is all there is to it. But I’ll come. I’ll have my trunk sent over and—Say, do I have to pay duty on what I have in my trunk?”
“Certainly,” said Mr. Fenelby. “That is, of course, if you want to enter into the spirit of the thing. It is only ten per cent., you know, and it all goes into Bobberts’ education fund.”
Billy sat in silent thought awhile.
“I wonder,” he said at length, “how it would do if I just put a few things into my suit-case—enough to last me a few days at a time—and left my trunk over here. I don’t need everything I brought in that trunk. I was perfectly reckless about putting things in that trunk. I put into that trunk nearly everything I own in this world, just because the trunk was so big that it would hold everything, and it seemed a pity to bring a big trunk like that with nothing in it but air. Now, I could take my suit-case and put into it the things I will really need—”
“Certainly,” said Mr. Fenelby. “You can do that if you want to, and it would be perfectly fair to Bobberts. All Bobberts asks is to be paid a duty on what enters the house. He don’t say what shall be brought in, or what shall not. Personally, Billy, I would call the duty off, so far as you are concerned, but I don’t think Laura would like it. We started this thing fair, and we are all living up to it. Laura made Kitty live up to it and you can see it would not be right for me to make an exception in your case just because you happen to be my brother.”
“No,” agreed Billy,“it wouldn’t. I don’t ask it. I will play the game and I will play it fair. All I ask is: If I bring a suit-case, do I have to pay on the case? Because if I do, I won’t bring it. I can wrap all I need in a piece of paper, and save the duty on the suit-case. I believe in playing fair, Tom, but that is no reason why I should be extravagant.”
“I think,” said Tom, doubtfully, “suit-cases should come in free. Of course, if it was a brand new suit-case it would have to pay duty, but an old one—one that has been used—is different. It is like wrapping-paper. The duty is assessed on what the package contains and not on the package itself. If it is not a new suit-caseyou will not have to pay duty on it.”
“Then my suit-case will go in free,” said Billy. “It is one of the first crop of suit-cases that was raised in this country, and I value it more as a relic than as a suit-case. I carry it more as a souvenir than as a suit-case.”
“Souvenirs are different,” said Mr. Fenelby. “Souvenirs are classed as luxuries, and pay thirty per cent. If you consider it a souvenir it pays duty.”
“I will consider it a suit-case,” said Billy promptly. “I will consider it a poor old, worn-out suit-case.”
“I think that would be better,” agreed Mr. Fenelby. “But we will have to wait and see what Laura considers it.”
As on the previous evening the ladies were on the porch, enjoying the evening air, when Mr. Fenelby reached home, with Billy in tow, and Billy greeted them as if he had never wished anything better than to meet Miss Kitty.
“Where is this custom house Tom has been telling me about?” he asked, as soon as the hand shaking was over. “I want to have my baggage examined. I have dutiable goods to declare. Who is the inspector?”
“‘I declare one collar’”“‘I declare one collar’”
“Laura is,” said Kitty. “She is the slave of the grinding system that fosters monopoly and treads under heel the poor people.”
“All right,” said Billy, “I declare one collar. I wish to bring one collar into the bosom of this family. I have in this suit-case one collar. I never travel without one extra collar. It is the two-for-a-quarter kind, with a name like a sleeping car, and it has been laundered twice, which brings it to the verge of ruin. How much do I have to pay on the one collar?”
“Collars are a necessity,” said Mrs. Fenelby, “and they pay ten per—”
“What a notion!” exclaimed Kitty.“Collars are not a necessity. Collars are an actual luxury, especially in warm weather. Many very worthy men never wear a collar at all, and would not think of wearing one in hot weather. They are like jewelry or—or something of that sort. Collars certainly pay thirty per cent.”
“I reserve the right to appeal,” said Billy. “Those are the words of an unjust judge. But how much do I take off the value of the collar because two thirds of its life has been laundered away? How much is one third of twelve and a half?”
“Now, that is pure nonsense,” Kitty said,“and I sha’n’t let poor, dear little Bobberts be robbed in any such way. That collar cost twelve and a half cents, and it has had two and a half cents spent on it twice, so it is now a seventeen and a half cent collar, and thirty per cent. of that is—is—”
“Oh, if you are going to rob me!” exclaimed Billy. “I don’t care. I can get along without a collar. I will bring out a sweater to-morrow.”
“Sweaters pay only ten per cent.,” said Kitty sweetly. “What else have you in your suit-case?”
“Air,” said Billy.“Nothing but air. I didn’t think I could afford to bring anything else, and I will leave the collar out here. I open the case—I take out the collar—I place it gently on the porch railing—and I take the empty suit-case into the house. I pay no duty at all, and that is what you get for being so grasping.”
Mr. Fenelby shook his head.
“You can’t do that, Billy,” he said. “That puts the suit-case in another class. It isn’t a package for holding anything now, and it isn’t a necessity—because you can’t need an empty suit-case—so it doesn’t go in at ten per cent., so it must be a luxury, and it pays thirty per cent.”
“That suit-case,” said Billy, looking at it with a calculating eye,“is not worth thirty per cent. of what it is worth. It is worthless, and I wouldn’t give ten per cent. of nothing for it. It stays outside. So I pay nothing. I go in free. Unless I have to pay on myself.”
“You don’t have to,” said Kitty, “although I suppose Laura and Tom think you are a luxury.”
“Don’t you think I am one?” asked Billy.
“No, I don’t,” said Kitty frankly, “and when you know me better, you will not ask such a foolish question. Where ever I am, there a young man is a necessity.”
The morning after Billy Fenelby’s arrival at the Fenelby home he awakened unusually early, as one is apt to awaken in a strange bed, and he lay awhile thinking over the events of the previous evening. He was more than ever convinced that Kitty was not the kind of girl he liked. He felt that she had made a bare-faced effort to flirt with him the evening before, and that she was just the kind of a girl that was aptto be troublesome to a bachelor. She was the kind of a girl that would demand a great deal of attention and expect it as a natural right, and then, when she received it, make the man feel that he had been attentive in quite another way, and that the only fair thing would be to propose. And he felt that she was the kind of girl that no man could propose to with any confidence whatever. She would be just as likely to accept him as not, and having accepted him, she would be just as likely to expect him to marry her as not. He felt that he was in a very ticklish situation. He saw that Kitty was the sort of girl that wouldtake any air of rude indifference he might assume to be a challenge, and any comely polite attention to be serious love making. He saw that the only safe thing for him to do would be to run away, but, since he had seen Kitty, that was the last thing in the world that he would have thought of doing. He decided that he would constitute her bright eyes and red lips to be a mental warning sign reading “Danger” in large letters, and that whenever he saw them he would be as wary as a rabbit and yet as brave as a lion.
He next felt a sincere regret that he had refused to pay the duty on theclean collar he had brought with him, and that he had left on the railing of the porch. He got out of bed and looked at the collar he had worn the day before, and frowned at it as he saw that it was not quite immaculate. Then he listened closely for any sound in the house that would tell him Mr. or Mrs. Fenelby were up. He heard nothing. He hastily slipped on his clothes, and tip-toed out of the room and down the stairs. This tariff for revenue only was well enough for Thomas and Laura, and assessing a duty of ten per cent. on everything that came into the house (and thirty per cent. on luxuries) might fill upBobberts’ bank, and provide that baby with an education fund, but it was an injustice to bachelor uncles when there was an unmarried girl in the house. If this Kitty girl was willing to so forget what was due to a young man as to appear in one dress the whole time of her stay, that was her look-out, but for his part he did not intend to lower his dignity by going down to breakfast in a soiled collar. If creeping down to the porch in his stockings, and bringing in that collar surreptitiously, was smuggling, then—
Billy stopped short at the screen door. From there he could see the spot on the railing where he had putthe collar, and the collar was not there! No doubt it had fallen to the lawn. He opened the screen door carefully and stepped outside. The early morning air was cool and sweet, and an ineffable quiet rested on the suburb. He tip-toed gently across the porch and down the porch steps, and hobbled carefully across the painful pebble walk and stepped upon the lawn. There was dew on the lawn. The lawn was soaked and saturated and steeped in dew. It bathed his feet in chilliness, as if he had stepped into a pail of ice water, and the vines that clambered up the porch-side were dewy too. As he kneeled on the grassand pawed among the vines, seeking the missing collar, the vines showered down the crystal drops upon him, and soaked his sleeves, and added a finishing touch of ruin to the collar he was wearing. The other collar was not there! It was not among the vines, it was not on the lawn, it was not on the porch, and soaked in socks and sleeves he retreated. He paused a minute on the porch to glance thoughtfully at the moist foot-prints his feet left on the boards, and wondered if they would be dry before Tom or Laura came down. At any rate there was no help for it now, and he went up the stairs again.
The most uncomfortable small discomfort is wet socks, whether they come from a small hole in the bottom of a shoe or from walking on a lawn in the early morning, and Billy wiggled his toes as he slowly and carefully climbed the stairs. As he turned the last turn at the top he stopped short and blushed. Kitty was standing there awaiting him, a smile on her face and his other collar in her hand. She laid her finger on her lip, and tapped it there to command silence, and raised her brows at him, to let him know that she knew where he had been and why.
“I thought you would want it,” she said in the faintest whisper,“so I smuggled it in last night. I had no ideayouwould stoop to such a thing, but—but I felt so sorry for you, without a collar.”
“Thanks!” whispered Billy. It was a masterpiece of whispering, that word. It was a gruff whisper, warding off familiarity, and yet it was a grateful whisper, as a whisper should be to thank a pretty girl for a favor done, but still it was a scoffing whisper, with a tinge of resentfulness, but resentfulness tempered by courtesy. Underlying all this was a flavor of independence, but not such crude independence that it killed the delicate tone that implied that the hearer ofthe whisper was a very pretty girl, and that that fact was granted even while her interference in the whisperer’s affairs was misliked, and her suspicions of dishonest acts on his part considered uncalled for. If he did not quite succeed in getting all this crowded into the one word it was doubtless because his feet were so wet and uncomfortable. Billy was rather conscious that he had not quite succeeded, and he would have tried again, adding this time an inflection to mean that he well understood that her object was to get him into a quasi conspiracy and thus draw him irrevocably into confidential relations of misdemeanorfrom which he could not escape, but that he refused to be so drawn—I say he would have repeated the word, but a sound in one of the bed-rooms close at hand sent them both tip-toeing to their rooms.
They had hardly reached safety when the door of Mr. Fenelby’s room opened and Mr. Fenelby stole out quietly, stole as quietly down the stairs and out upon the porch. He looked at the railing where Billy had left the collar, and then he peered over the railing, and as silently stole up the stairs again. He paused at Billy’s door and tapped on it. Billy opened it a mere hint of a crack.
“What is it?” he whispered.
“That collar,” whispered Mr. Fenelby. “I thought about it all night, and I didn’t think it right that you should be made to do without it. I just went down, to get it, but it isn’t there.”
“Never mind,” whispered Billy. “Don’t worry, old man. I will wear the one I have.”
Mr. Fenelby hesitated.
“Of course,” he whispered, “you won’t—That is to say, you needn’t tell Laura I went down—”
“Certainly not,” whispered Billy. “It was awfully kind of you to think of it. But I’ll make this one do.”
Mr. Fenelby waited at the door a moment longer as if he had something more to say, but Billy had closed the door, and he went back to his room.
It was with relief that Bridget heard the door close behind Mr. Fenelby. She had been standing on the little landing of the back-stairs, where he had almost caught her as she was coming up. If she had been one step higher he would have seen her head. Usually she would not have minded this, for she had a perfect right to be on the back-stairs in the early morning, but this time she felt that it was her duty to remain undiscovered. Now that Mr. Fenelby was gone shesoftly stepped to Billy’s door and knocked lightly.
“Misther Billy, sor, are ye there?” she whispered. Billy opened the door a crack and looked out.
“Mornin’ to ye,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “I’m sorry t’ disthurb ye, but Missus Fenelby axed me t’ bring up th’ collar ye left on th’ porrch railin’, an’ t’ let no wan know I done it, an’ I just wanted t’ let ye know th’ reason I have not brung it up is because belike someone else has brang it already, for it is gone.”
“Thank you, Bridget,” whispered Billy. “It doesn’t matter.”
She turned away, but when he hadclosed the door she paused, and after hesitating a moment she tapped on his door again. He opened it.
“I have put me foot in it,” she said, “like I always do. W’u’d ye be so good as t’ fergit I mentioned th’ name of Missus Fenelby, that’s a dear man? I raymimber now I was not t’ mention it t’ ye.”
“Certainly, Bridget,” said Billy, and he closed the door and went again to the window, where he was turning his socks over and over in the streak of sunlight that warmed a part of the window sill.
It took the socks a little longer to dry than he had thought it would, andthey were still damp enough to make his feet feel anything but comfortable when he heard the breakfast bell tinkle faintly. He hurried the rest of his toilet and went down the stairs, assuming as he went the air of unsuspected innocence that is the inborn right of every man who knows he has done wrong. The bodily Billy was more conscious of the discomfort of his feet, but the mental Billy was all collar. He had never known a collar to be so obtrusive. He felt that he must seem all collar, even to the most casual eye, but he was upheld by the belief that no one would dare to mention collar to him in public. If he hadsinned he was not the only sinner, for he was but a partner in conspiracy. He walked down the stairs boldly.
“And to think that his vanity should be the cause of robbing poor little Bobberts,” he heard a clear voice say as he neared the dining room door. “It is too mean! I can never look up to man with the faith I have always had in man, after this. But I know they were his foot-prints, Laura.”
“Are you so sure, Kitty?” asked Mrs. Fenelby. “Mightn’t they be—mightn’t they be Bridget’s?”
“They were not,” said the voice of Kitty, and Billy paused where he wasand stood still. “Bridget does not go about in the wet grass in her stocking feet. Those were Billy’s tracks on the porch. I am no Sherlock Holmes, but I can tell you just what he did. He stole down before we were awake, to look for that collar, and he did not find it on the railing where he had left it. Then he saw it where it had fallen and he went down on the wet lawn and got it. Watch him when he comes in to breakfast. He will be wearing a collar, and it will not be the one he wore last night.”
Billy turned and tip-toed softly up the stairs again, undoing his tie as he went. When he came down his neckwas neatly, but informally swathed in a white handkerchief. Three pairs of eyes watched him as he entered, but he faced them unflinchingly. Mr. and Mrs. Fenelby let their eyes drop before his glance, but Kitty met his gaze with a challenge. There was nothing of treachery in her face, and yet she had sought to betray him. He looked at her with greater interest than he had ever known himself to feel regarding any girl, and as he looked he had a startled sense that she was fairer than she had been, and he caught his breath quickly and began to talk to Mrs. Fenelby.
“Tom,” he said, after breakfast, asMr. Fenelby was getting ready to leave to catch his train, “I think I’ll walk over to the station with you. I have something I want to say to you.”
“Come along,” said Mr. Fenelby. “But you will have to walk quickly. I have just time to catch my train.”
“Did you notice anything peculiar about Miss Kitty this morning?” asked Billy, when they had left the house.
“Peculiar?” said Mr. Fenelby. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, I don’t want to make trouble, Tom,” said Billy,“but I think I ought to speak about this thing. If it wasn’t serious I wouldn’t mention it at all, but I think you ought to know what is going on in your own house. I think you ought to know what kind of a girl Miss Kitty is, so that you can be on your guard. Now, you went down to get that collar for me, didn’t you?”
“I wish you wouldn’t mention that,” said Mr. Fenelby with some annoyance.
“Oh, I know all about that,” said Billy, warmly.“You say that because you don’t like to be thanked for all these nice, thoughtful things you do for a fellow. But I do thank you—just as much as if you had found the collar and had brought it up to me. That was all right. You would have paid the duty on it, and that would have been all right. But what do you think Miss Kitty did? Why do you think you could not find that collar? Do you know what she did? She brought that collar into the house—smuggled it in—and she had the nerve, the actual nerve, to give it to me. And I took it. I couldn’t do anything else, could I, when a girl offered it to me? I couldn’t say I wouldn’t take it, could I? I had to be a gentleman about it. And then she tried to get me into trouble by telling you I would come down to breakfast wearing that collar. She tried to make out that I was a smuggler.”
“I suppose it was just a bit of fun,” said Mr. Fenelby. “Girls are that way, some of them.”
“Well, I want it understood that that collar is in the house, and that I didn’t bring it in,” said Billy, “and that if this Domestic Tariff business is to be carried out fairly it is Miss Kitty’s business to pay the duty on it. I want to set myself right with you. But the thing I wanted to speak about was far more serious. Do you know what she had on this morning?”
“What she had on?” asked Mr. Fenelby. “What did she have on?”
“She had on a pink shirt-waist,” said Billy fiercely. “That is what she had on. Right at breakfast there, in plain sight of everyone. A pink shirt-waist!”
“Well, that’s all right, isn’t it?” asked Mr. Fenelby, doubtfully. “It’s proper to wear a pink shirt-waist at breakfast, isn’t it? I think Laura wears shirt-waists at breakfast sometimes. I’m sure it’s all right. An informal home breakfast like that.”
“But it was pink,” insisted Billy. “I looked right at it, and I know. Real pink. You wouldn’t notice it, because you are so honest yourself, and so confiding, but I noticed it the firstthing. Now what do you think of your Miss Kitty? What do you say to that—a girl coming right down to breakfast in a pink shirt-waist, right before the whole family?”
“I—I don’t know what to say,” faltered Mr. Fenelby, and this was the truth, for he did not.
“Well, what would you say if I told you that she had on a white shirt-waist last evening—a white one with fluffy stuff all around the collar?” asked Billy. “Wouldn’t you say that that proved it?”
“I don’t see anything wrong in that,” said Mr. Fenelby. “What does it prove?”
“It proves that she has two shirt-waists,” said Billy, seriously, “that is what it proves. Two shirt-waists, a white one and a pink one, one for dinner and one for breakfast. I don’t blame you for not noticing it, but I am strong that way. I notice colors and trimmings and all that sort of thing. And I tell you she has two. I saw them both and I know it. If that isn’t serious I don’t know what is.”
“Well?” said Mr. Fenelby.
“Well,” echoed Billy, “she is only supposed to have one. She only paid duty on one, and she has two. That is what I call real smuggling. And nobody knows how many more shehas. Dozens for all I know. Imagine her talking about my one poor old last year’s collar, and then flaunting around in two shirt-waists right before our eyes. I call that pretty serious. I’m going to watch her. You can’t be here all day to do it, but I haven’t anything else to do, and I’m going to stay right around her all day and find out about this thing.”
“If you don’t want to—” began Mr. Fenelby, remembering Billy’s protestations of dislike for girls.
“I’ll do my duty by you and Bobberts, old man,” said Billy, generously.
“I was only going to say that Laura could look out for that sort of thing,” said Mr. Fenelby. “I might say a word to her.”
“Well, now, I didn’t like to bring that part of it up,” said Billy, “but since you mention it, I guess I had better say the whole thing. It isn’t natural that a woman shouldn’t notice what another woman has on, is it? They are all keen on that sort of thing. I don’t say Laura is standing in with Kitty on this shirt-waist smuggling. I suppose it worries her terribly to see Kitty smuggling clothes in right under her nose, but how can Laura say anything about it? Kitty is her guest, isn’t she? You leave it to me!”
Just then they reached the station and the train arrived and Mr. Fenelby jumped aboard, and as it pulled out Billy turned and walked back to the house.
When the Commonwealth of Bobberts had adopted the Fenelby Domestic Tariff it had been Mrs. Fenelby’s duty to inform Bridget of it, and to explain it to her, and for two days Mrs. Fenelby worried about it. It was only by exercising the most superhuman wiles that a servant could be persuaded to sojourn in the suburb. To hold one in thrall it was necessary to practice the most consummate diplomacy. Thesuburban servant knows she is a rare and precious article, and she is apt to be headstrong and independent, and so she must be driven with a tight rein and strong hand, and yet she is so apt to leave at a moment’s notice if anything offends her, that she must be driven with a light rein and a hand as light and gentle as a bit of thistledown floating on a zephyr. This is a hard combination to attain. It is like trying to drive a skittish and headstrong horse, densely constructed of lamp-chimneys and window glass, down a rough cobble-stoned hill road. If given the rein the glass horse will dash madly to flinders, and if the reinis held taut the horse’s glass head will snap off and the whole business go to crash. No juggler keeping alternate cannon-balls and feathers in the air ever exercised greater nicety of calculation than did Mrs. Fenelby in her act of at once retaining and restraining Bridget.
To go boldly into the kitchen and announce to Bridget that she would hereafter be expected to pay into Bobberts’ bank ten per cent. of the value of every necessity and thirty per cent. of the value of every luxury she brought into the house was the last thing that Mrs. Fenelby would have thought of doing. There were bits inthat rough sketch of human nature known as Bridget’s character that did not harmonize with the idea. There had been nothing said, when Bridget had been engaged, about a domestic tariff. Paying one is not usually considered a part of a general house-worker’s duties, and Mrs. Fenelby felt that it would be poor policy to break this news to Bridget too abruptly. She used diplomacy.
“Bridget,” she said, kindly, “we are very well satisfied with the way you do your work. We like you very well indeed.”
“Thank ye, ma’am,” answered Bridget,“and I’m glad to hear ye say it, though it makes little odds t’ me. I do the best I know how, ma’am, and if ye don’t like the way I do, there is plenty of other ladies would be glad t’ get me.”
“But we do like the way you do,” said Mrs. Fenelby eagerly. “We are perfectly satisfied—perfectly!”
“From th’ way ye started off,” said Bridget, with a shrug of her shoulders, “I thought ye was goin’ t’ give me th’ bounce. Some does it that way.”
“No, indeed,” Mrs. Fenelby assured her.“Especially not as you take such an interest in dear little Bobberts. You seem to like him as well as if he was your own little brother. Did I tell you what Mr. Fenelby had planned for him?”
“Somethin’ t’ make more worrk for me, is it?” asked Bridget suspiciously.
“Not at all!” said Mrs. Fenelby. “It is just about his education; about when he gets old enough to go to college.”
“’Twill be a long time from now before then,” said Bridget. “I can see it has nawthin’ to do with me.”
“But that is just it,” said Mrs. Fenelby. “It has something to do with you—and with all of us. With everyone in this house. You love little Bobberts so much that you will be glad to help in his education.”
“Will I?” said Bridget in a way that was not too encouraging.
“Yes, I know you will,” Mrs. Fenelby chirped cheerfully, “because it is the cutest plan. I know you will be so interested in it. Mr. Fenelby thought of it himself, and he told me to tell you about it, because, really, you know, you are just like one of the family—”
“Barring I have t’ be in at ten o’clock and have t’ sleep in th’ attic,” Bridget interposed. “And don’t eat with th’ family. And a few other differences. But go ahead and tell me what is th’ extry worrk.”
“Well, it isn’t extra work at all,” said Mrs. Fenelby reassuringly. “It is just a way we thought of to raise money to pay for Bobberts’ education. It is like a government and taxes, and everybody in the family pays part of the taxes—”
“I was wonderin’ why I was one of the family so much, all of a suddent,” said Bridget. “I thought something was comin’. I notice that whenever I get to be one of th’ family, ma’am, where ever I happen t’ be workin’, something comes. But it never has been taxes before. It is a new one to me, taxes is.”
Mrs. Fenelby explained as clearly as she could the meaning and methodof the Fenelby Domestic Tariff, and its simple schedule of rates, and Bridget listened attentively. Mrs. Fenelby expected an explosion, and was prepared for it.
“I’m sure I’m much obliged t’ ye, Missus Fenelby,” said Bridget, sarcastically, “an’ ’tis a great honor ye are doin’ me t’ take me into th’ family this way, but ’tis agin me principles t’ be one of th’ family on sixteen dollars a month when there is tariffs in th’ same family. I’m thinkin’ I’ll stay outside th’ family, ma’am. An’ if ye will kindly let me past, I’ll go up an’ be packin’ up me trunk.”
“But Bridget,” Mrs. Fenelby said, quickly, “I am not through yet. I knew you couldn’t afford to pay the—the tariff. I didn’t expect you to, out of your wages. And if you had just waited a minute I was going to tell you that, seeing that you will be out of pocket by the tariff, I am going to pay you eighteen dollars a month after this.”
“Well, of course,” said Bridget with a sweet smile, “I was only jokin’ about me trunk.”
So that was all settled, and Mrs. Fenelby felt at ease, but she did not think it necessary to tell her husband about the extra two dollars a month.It came out of her housekeeping money, and she could economize a little on something else.
“Laura,” said her husband that evening, “have you spoken to Bridget about the tariff yet?”
“Yes, dear,” she answered, and he said that was right, and that she must see that Bridget lived up to it. But he did not tell her that he had interviewed Bridget while Mrs. Fenelby was upstairs a few minutes before, nor that he had privately agreed with Bridget to pay her two dollars a month extra out of his own pocket provided she accepted the Fenelby Domestic Tariff, and abided by it,just as if she was one of the family. Neither did Bridget think it worth while to mention it to Mrs. Fenelby. From the time she was informed of the existence of the tariff up to the arrival of Kitty Bridget paid into Bobberts’ bank twenty cents. This was the duty on a two dollar hat that even the most critical mind could not have called a luxury, and there Bridget’s payments seemed to stop. She did not seem to feel the need of making any purchases just then.
“Kitty, dear,” said Mrs. Fenelby, gently, the morning of the damp foot-prints on the porch, after the men had started for the station,“that is a pretty shirt-waist you have on this morning.”
“Do you like it?” asked Kitty, innocently. “Don’t you think it is a little tight across the shoulders?”
“No,” said Mrs. Fenelby. “And I like this skirt better than the one you were wearing yesterday.”
There was no mistaking the meaning of that. The way Mrs. Fenelby bowed over the bit of sewing she had taken up was evidence that she had suspicion in her mind. Kitty clasped her hands behind her back and laughed.
“You have been looking into my closet!” she declared. “You sit thereand try to look innocent, and you know everything that I have, down to the last ribbon! Well, I just can’t afford to pay your old tariff. It would simply ruin me. And the men will never know, anyway. They don’t notice such things. I could wear a different dress every day, and they wouldn’t know it.”
“But I know it,” said Laura, reprovingly. “Do you think it is right, Kitty, to smuggle things into the house that way? Is it fair to Bobberty?”
“There!” exclaimed Kitty, dropping a jingling coin into Bobberts’ bank. “There is a quarter for him! That is every cent I can afford.”
“That wouldn’t pay the duty on one single shirt-waist,” said Laura, quietly.
“It wouldn’t,” admitted Kitty, frankly, bending over Laura and taking her face in her hands. She turned the face upward and looked in its eyes. Then she bent down and whispered in Laura’s ear, and laughed as a blush suffused Laura’s face.
“I was short of money,” said Laura with dignity, “and I mean to pay the duty as soon as I get my next week’s allowance. I simply had to have a new purse, and you coaxed me to buy it. It wasn’t smuggling at all.”
“Wasn’t it?” asked Kitty.“Then why did you ask me to leave it in my room, instead of showing it to Tom? Smuggler!”
Mrs. Fenelby arose and walked away. She turned to the kitchen and opened the door. She was just in time to see Bridget lower a bottle from her lips and hastily conceal it behind her skirts.
“Bridget!” she exclaimed sharply, with horror.
“’Tis th’ doctor’s orders, ma’am,” said Bridget. “’Tis for me cold.”
She coughed as well as she could, but it was not a very successful cough. Mrs. Fenelby hesitated a moment, and then she pointed to the door.
“You may pack your trunk, Bridget,” she said, and Bridget jerked off her apron and stamped out of the kitchen.
“But perhaps the poor thing was taking it by her doctor’s orders,” suggested Kitty, when Mrs. Fenelby, red eyed, went into the front rooms again.
“She’ll have to go,” said Mrs. Fenelby, dolefully. “I can’t have a drinking servant where poor, dear Bobberts is. But that isn’t what makes me feel so badly. It is to think how that girl has deceived me. I treated her just as I would treat one of the family, and she pretended to be so fond of Bobberts, and so interested in hiseducation, and so eager to help his fund, and here she has been smuggling liquor into the house all the time.”
She wiped her eyes and sighed.
“And liquor is a luxury, and pays thirty per cent.,” she said sadly. “I don’t know who to trust when I can’t trust a girl like Bridget. She should have paid the duty the minute she brought the stuff into the house. It just shows that you can’t place any reliance on that class.”
Kitty nodded assent.
“You’ll have to pay her,” she said. “Shall I run up and get your purse?”
She went, and as she reached thehall, Billy entered. He gazed at Kitty’s garments closely, making mental note of them for future comparisons, and as he stood aside to let her pass he held one hand carefully out of sight behind him. It held a package—an oblong package, sharply rectangular in shape. A close observer would have said it was a box such as contains fifty cigars when it is full, but it was not full. Billy had taken one of the cigars out when he made the purchase at the station cigar store.
When Billy Fenelby had taken his box of cigars up to his room he came down again, but he did not go anywhere near Bobberts’ bank, as he should have gone had he intended depositing in it the thirty per cent. of the value of the cigars, which was the duty due on cigars under the provisions of the Fenelby Domestic Tariff. He walked out to the veranda and got into thehammock and began to read the morning paper.
From time to time he let it hang down over the edge of the hammock, as if it bored him, and he glanced at the door as if he hoped someone would come out of the house. The paper was not very interesting that morning, and Billy had other things to think of. He had volunteered to keep an eye on Kitty, and to find out definitely, if he could, whether she was smuggling shirt-waists and other things—or had already smuggled them—into the house, contrary to the provisions of the tariff. He felt that the more he saw of girls the less heliked them, and that the more he saw of Kitty, particularly, the less he fancied her, but if he was going to do this amateur detective business he wanted to begin it as soon as possible, and he watched the door closely. He wanted to see whether Kitty would still wear the pink shirt-waist she had worn at breakfast, or the white one she had worn the evening before, or whether she would dare to wear another.
The sudden departure of Bridget had upset the domestic affairs somewhat, and Kitty and Mrs. Fenelby were busy in the kitchen, but after the dishes were washed, and the rooms setto rights, and the beds made, and Bobberts given his bath, Kitty came out. It had been a long and tedious morning for Billy. There is nothing so helpless as a detective who can’t work at his business of detecting, and when the job is to detect a pretty girl, and she won’t show up, the waiting is rather tiresome. At one time Billy was almost tempted to go in and ask her to come out, and he would probably have gone in and snooped around a bit, if she had not appeared just then.
Kitty came out with all the brazen effrontery of a hardened criminal. That is to say she came out singing,and with her hair perfectly in order, and looking in every way fresh and charming. Billy recognized this immediately as the wile of a malefactor trying to throw an officer of the law off the scent, but he was not to be discouraged by it, and he jumped out of the hammock and went up to her. She still wore the pink shirt-waist, and it was very becoming. She looked just as well in it as if she had paid the lawful ten per cent. duty on it. It is not the duty that makes that kind of a shirt-waist pretty; it is the way it is made, and the trimming. The girl that is in it helps some, too. It is a fact that a shirt-waist looks entirelydifferent on different girls. You have to consider the girl and her shirt-waist together, as a whole or unit, if you are going to be able to recognize it when you see it again, and Billy was ready to consider it that way. If he ever saw that pink confection with that saucy chin and merry face above it again he meant to be able to recognize the combination. That is one of the duties of a detective.
“Let’s go out under the tree,” he said, “and sit down, and—and talk it over. I have something I want to talk about.”
“Talk it over,” said Kitty, lifting her eyebrows. “Talk what over?”
You couldn’t nonplus Billy that way, when he was in pursuit of his duty.
“Well,” he said, “we—that is, I didn’t thank you for bringing me up that collar this morning. I want to thank you for it.”
“Yes?” said Kitty. “Well, here I am. Thank me. You did thank me once, but I don’t care. Do it again.”
“Thank you,” said Billy.
“You’re welcome,” Kitty said, and then they both laughed.
“What do you think of this Domestic Tariff business?” asked Billy, seeking to lead her into some admission of which he could make use as proof of her smuggling.
“I think it is a simply splendid idea!” Kitty declared. “I am sure no one but Tom could have thought of it, and the very minute I heard of it I went into it body and soul. It was so clever of him to conceive such an idea, and such a simple way to build up an education fund for dear, sweet, little Bobberts! And isn’t it nice of Tom and Laura to let us be in it and pay our share of the duty. It makes us feel so much more as if we were really part of the family.”
“Doesn’t it?” said Billy. “It makes us feel as if we had a right to be here—when we pay duty and all that. I feel like bringing in a lot ofstuff just so that I can pay duty on it. I was thinking about it this morning, and about that little joke of mine about not bringing in that collar last night, and I felt what I had missed by leaving it out on the porch, so I got up and went down for it. That was how you happened to meet me in the hall—I wanted to get it and bring it in so I could pay the duty, and be in the fun myself. You don’t think I was going to smuggle it in, do you?”
“Oh, no!” said Kitty, with a long-drawn o. “Nobody would be so mean as to smuggle anything into the house, when the duty all goes to dear little Bobberts. It is such fun to pay duty,just as if the house was a real nation. It is like being part of the nation, and you know we women are not that. We can’t vote, nor anything, and a chance like this is so rare that we enjoy it immensely. You didn’t think it was queer that I should go down so early in the morning to get your collar and bring it in, did you?”
“Well, of course,” said Billy, doubtfully, “it wasn’t your collar, you know. It was my collar.”
“I know it was,” Kitty admitted frankly, “but you know how little we women can bring into the house. Hardly anything. We shop and shop, but we hardly ever really buyanything, and all the time I am just crazy to be paying duty, and to know whether it is ten per cent. or thirty per cent., and all that, as if I was a man, and so, when I happened to think of that collar that you had left down here on the porch railing, I saw it was my chance, and I decided to come down and get it and bring it into the house, so I could have the fun of paying the duty on it. So I came down and got it. And just as I reached the landing on my way up I met you, and I was so surprised that I just handed the collar to you.”
“Of course,” said Billy. “That was just the way it was, except thatIhad just reached the landing onmyway up, when you handed me the collar.Youcouldn’thave just reached the landing, because if you had we would have been going up the stairs together, side by side, and we were not doing that.Iwas going up the stairs, and just as I reached the landing you came from somewhere and handed me the collar.”
“Isn’t that what I said?” asked Kitty sweetly. “It amounts to the same thing, anyway, doesn’t it? I had the collar, and you got it. I suppose you paid the duty on it?”
“Me?” said Billy. “Not much! I didn’t bring it into the house; youbrought it in. You have to pay the duty.”
“I pay the duty on your collar?” laughed Kitty. “Well, I should think I would not! I went down and got it for you, and that was nothing but an act of kindness that anybody would do for anybody else. You can pay your own duties.”
“Oh, I sha’n’t pay a duty on it!” scoffed Billy. “I didn’t want the collar. I didn’t need it, and I refused to bring it into the house on principle. I don’t believe in tariff duties. I’m a free trader. I wouldn’t smuggle, and I wouldn’t pay duty, and so I left it outside. You should have left itthere. You didn’t leave it there, and so it is your duty to pay the duty.”
“Never!” declared Kitty.
For a few minutes they were silent, and Billy looked glumly at the street. Then he cheered up suddenly. He looked at Kitty and smiled.
“I’ll tell you what let’s do!” he exclaimed. “Let’s go out under the tree and talk it over. We’ll go out under the tree and talk it all over. That is the only way we can settle it.”
“It is settled now,” said Kitty. “I don’t think it needs any more settling.”
Billy beamed upon her cheerfully.
“Well,” he said, “let’s go out under the tree and—and unsettle it.”
For a moment Kitty seemed to hesitate, but that was only for Billy’s good, lest he think she yielded to his whims too readily. Then she went, and draped herself gracefully upon the sweet, dry grass, and Billy sat himself cross-legged near her.
“Now, what do you think of this Domestic Tariff business, anyway?” he asked.
“I think it is the silliest thing I ever heard of,” said Kitty frankly. “I never heard of a man with real sense conceiving such a thing. As if such a lot of nonsense is needed to save a fewdollars for an education that isn’t to come about for sixteen years or so! And the idea of making his guests pay the duty too! It is the most unhospitable thing I ever heard of!”
“Isn’t it?” agreed Billy, promptly. “It makes us feel as if we had no right to be here. A man can’t afford to bring even the things he needs, when he has to pay that exorbitant duty on everything. And it is so much worse on you. Now I can get along with very little. A man can, you know. But how is a girl going to do without all the things she is accustomed to? I believe,” he said, confidentially lowering his voice andglancing at the house, “I believe, if I were a girl, I would be tempted to smuggle in the things I really needed.”
“Would you?” asked Kitty, sweetly. “But then you men have different ideas of such things, don’t you? You don’t think a girl would do such a thing, do you? Would you advise it? I don’t know whether—how would you go about smuggling, if you wanted to? But I don’t believe it would be honest, would it?”
She turned up to him two such innocent eyes that Billy almost blushed. There is no satisfaction in knowing a person is guilty, the satisfaction is inmaking the person look guilty, and Kitty looked like an innocent child questioning the face of a tempter and seeing guilt there. He longed to ask her outright how she happened to have a pink shirt-waist, but he did not dare to, lest he put her at once on her guard. He felt a great desire to take her by the shoulders and shake her out of her calm superiority. It was very trying to him. No girl had a right to act as if she thought herself the superior of any man. Just to show her how inferior she was he dropped the subject of the tariff entirely and began a conversation on Ibsen. He did not know much about Ibsen but heknew a little and he could lead her beyond her depths and make her feel her inferiority that way. Kitty listened to him with an amused smile, and then told him a few things about Ibsen, quoted a few enlightening pages from Hauptmann, routed him, slaughtered him gently as he fled from position to position, and ended by asking him if he had ever read anything of Ibsen’s. It was very trying to Billy. This girl evidently had no respect for the superior brain of man whatever.
“I think the lawn needs sprinkling,” he said, coldly.
“Do you know how it should be done?” she asked, and that was the final insult. Nice girls never asked such questions in such a way. Nice girls looked up with wonder in their eyes and said, “Oh! You men know how to do everything!” That settled Billy’s opinion of Kitty! She was evidently one of these over-educated, forward, scheming, coquetting girls. She had not even said, “Oh! don’t sprinkle the lawn now; stay here and talk with me.” He squared his shoulders and marched over to the sprinkling apparatus, while she sat with her back against the tree and watched him. He turned on the water and adjusted the nozzle to a good strongflow. He wet the lawn at the rear of the house first, and was pulling the hose after him into the front lawn when Mrs. Fenelby suddenly appeared on the porch. She had a box of cigars in her hand, and when he saw them Billy jumped guiltily.
“Billy!” she exclaimed, “Are these your cigars?”
“Why, say!” he said, after one glance at her face on which suspicion was but too plainly imprinted. “Those are cigars, aren’t they? That’s a whole box of cigars, isn’t it?”
“It is,” said Mrs. Fenelby, severely, “and I found it in your room. I don’tremember having received any duty on a box of cigars, Billy. I hope you were not trying to smuggle them in. I hope you were not trying to rob poor, dear little Bobberts, Billy.”
Billy held the nozzle limply in one hand and let the stream pour wastefully at his feet.
“That box of cigars—” he began weakly. “That box of cigars, the box you found in my room, well, that is a box of cigars. You see, Mrs. Fenelby,” he continued, cautiously, “that box of cigars was up there in my room, and—Now, you know I wouldn’t try to smuggle anything in, don’t you? Now, I’ll tell you all about it.”But he didn’t. He looked at the box thoughtfully. He saw now that he had been silly to buy a whole box. A man should not buy more than a handful at a time.
“Well?” said Mrs. Fenelby, impatiently.
“Isn’t that the box you bought when you went over to the station with Tom this morning?” asked Kitty, sweetly. “You brought back a box when you returned you know.”
Billy turned his head and glared at her. But she only smiled at him. He did not dare to look Mrs. Fenelby in the eye.
“Tom smokes a great deal, doesn’t he?” Kitty continued lightly. “I wondered when you brought that box of cigars back with you if he hadn’t asked you to bring them over for him. That was what I thought the moment I saw you with them.”
“Why, yes, of course,” said Billy, with relief. “That was how it was. I—I didn’t like to say it, you know,” he assured Mrs. Fenelby, eagerly, “I—I didn’t know just how Tom would feel about it. Tom will pay the duty. When he comes home this evening. He couldn’t come home from the station—and miss his train—and all that sort of thing—just to pay the duty on a box of cigars, couldhe? So I brought them home. It is perfectly plain and simple! You see if he doesn’t pay the duty as soon as he gets in the house. Tom wouldn’t want to smuggle them in, Mrs. Fenelby. You shouldn’t think he would do such a thing. I’m—I’m surprised that you should think that of Tom.”
Mrs. Fenelby looked at him doubtfully, and then glanced at Kitty’s innocent face. She shook her head. It did not seem just what Tom would have done, but she could not deny that it might be so. She would know all about it when he came home in the evening. She cast a glance at the lawn, and uttered a cry. Billywas pouring oceans of water at full pressure upon her pansy bed, and the poor flowers were dashing madly about and straining at their roots. Some were already lying washed out by the roots. Billy looked, and swung the nozzle sharply around, and the scream that Kitty uttered told him that he had hit another mark. That pink shirt-waist looked disreputable. Water was dripping from all its laces, and from Kitty’s hair, and her cheeks glistened with pearly drops. She was drenched.
“Goodness!” she exclaimed, shaking her hanging arms and her down-bent head, and then glancing at Billy,who stood idiotically regarding her, she laughed. He was a statue of miserable regret, and the limply held garden hose was pouring its stream unheeded into his low shoes. Wet as she was, and uncomfortable, she could not refrain from laughing, for Billy could not have looked more guilty if she had been sugar and had completely melted before his eyes. Even Mrs. Fenelby laughed.
“It doesn’t matter a bit!” said Kitty, reassuringly. “Really, I don’t mind it at all. It was nice and cool.”
She was very pretty, from Billy’s point of view, as she stood with a wisp or two of wet hair coquettishlystraggling over her face. Mrs. Fenelby would have said she looked mussy, but there is something strangely enticing to a man in a bit of hair wandering astray over a pretty face. Before marriage, that is. It quite finished Billy. He forgave her all just on account of those few wet, wandering locks.
“I’m so sorry!” he said, with enormous contrition. “I’m awfully sorry. I’m—I’m mighty sorry. Really, I’m sorry.”
“Now, it doesn’t matter a bit,” said Kitty lightly. “Not a bit! I’ll just run up and get on something dry—”
“You had better shut off the water,” said Mrs. Fenelby, and went into the house.
Billy laid the hose carefully at his feet.
“I say,” he said, hesitatingly, to Kitty, “wear the one you had on last night—the white one. I—I think that one’s pretty.”
“Oh, no!” said Kitty. “I can’t wear that one. That one is all mussed up. I can’t wear that one again. I have a lovely blue one.”
“No!” said Billy, whispering, and glancing suspiciously at the house. “Not blue! Please don’t! It—it’s dangerous.”
“Oh, but it is a dream of a waist!” said Kitty. “You wait until you see it.”
“No!” pleaded Billy again. “Not a blue one! If you wore a blue one I couldn’t help but notice it was blue. It isn’t safe. Don’t wear a blue one, or a green one, or a brown one. Just a white one. Not any other color; just white. You see,” he said with sudden confidentiality, “I’m a detective. I’m detecting for Tom. I told him I would, and I’ve got to keep my word. He has a notion someone is smuggling things into the house without paying the duty, and he got me to detect at you for him. We’re suspiciousabout your clothes. There’s a white waist, and this pink waist, already, and if you go to wearing blue ones and all sorts of colors, I can’t help but notice it. I don’t want to get you into trouble with Tom, you know.” He hesitated a moment and then said, “You helped me out about those cigars.”
“All right!” said Kitty, cheerfully, “I’ll wear a white one, but I think you might be color blind if you really want to help me.”