"Of course you have to pay tariff on the gas bill!" exclaimed Mr.
Fenelby. "The gas came into the house, didn"t it?"
"But you said I didn"t have to pay tariff on the rent bill," argued Laura; "and the rent bill is just as much a bill as the gas bill is.
You know very well, Tom, that we always figure on those three things as if they were just alike--the rent, and the gas, and Bridget,--and I don"t see why, if there is a tariff on gas why there should not be one on rent."
"Rent isn"t a thing that comes into the house," explained Mr.
Fenelby. "You can"t _see_ rent."
"You can"t see gas," said Mrs. Fenelby.
"You can see it if it is lighted," said Mr. Fenelby, "and you can smell it any time you want to. Gas is a real object, or thing, and we buy it, and it pays a duty."
"Very well," said Mrs. Fenelby. "Then I ought to pay duty on Bridget, too. She is a real thing, and we pay money for her, just as much as we do for gas, and she is a thing that comes into the house.
If I don"t pay on Bridget, I don"t see why I should pay on the gas.
The next thing you will be saying that Bridget is a luxury, and that I ought to pay thirty per cent. on her! Probably I ought to pay a duty on Bobberts! I don"t think it is fair that I should pay on everything. I will not pay ten per cent. on the gas bill.
Everything seems to come the same day."
"Laura!" exclaimed Mr. Fenelby, with sudden joy, "you don"t have to pay on the gas bill this month! I wonder I hadn"t thought of it.
That gas bill is for gas used before the tariff was adopted! And now that you know about it, you will expect to pay next month."
"I shall warn Bridget again about using so much in the range," said Laura. "We shall have to economize very carefully, Tom. I can see that. The tariff is going to make our living very expensive."
They had reached the house, and had lingered a minute on the porch, and now they went inside, for they heard the dinner-bell tinkle.
"You had better drop eight cents in the bank before you forget it,"
said Mrs. Fenelby.
"Eight cents?" inquired Tom, quite at a loss to remember what he was to pay eight cents for.
"Eight cents," repeated his wife. "For the candy. It is eighty cents a pound, isn"t it? But it is a luxury, isn"t it? That would be twenty-four cents!"
"Yes, twenty-four cents," said Tom, smiling. "Twenty-four cents; but I don"t pay it. You pay it."
"_I_ pay it!" cried Mrs. Fenelby. "The idea! I didn"t buy the candy.
I didn"t even ask you to buy it, Tom, although I am very glad to have it, and you are a dear to bring it to me. But you are the one to pay for it. You bought it."
"My dear," said Mr. Fenelby, "whoever brings a thing into the house pays the duty on it. I gave you the box of candy when we were a full block from the house, and you accepted it, and it was your property after that, and you brought it into the house, and you must pay the duty on it."
For a moment Mrs. Fenelby was inclined to be hurt, and then she laughed.
"What is it?" her husband asked, as he seated himself at his end of the table, and unfolded his napkin.
"I"ll pay the twenty-four cents; but please don"t bring me any more candy," she said. "I can"t afford presents. But that wasn"t what I was laughing about. I just happened to think of Will and Kitty. Will they have to pay duty on their trunks and all the things they have in them? Kitty has the most _luxurious_ dresses, and luxuries pay thirty per cent. If she will have to pay on them perhaps I had better telegraph her to come with only a dress suit-case."
They did not telegraph Kitty. About a week later Kitty arrived, and the next day Billy came, and to each the Fenelbys explained the Fenelby Tariff, on the way up from the station. Both thought it was a splendid idea, and agreed to uphold the tariff law and abide by it and be governed by it, and when Mrs. Fenelby handed Kitty"s baggage-checks to Tom and asked him to see that the three trunks were sent over from the city and delivered at the house, Mr. Fenelby had no idea what was in store for him.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Mrs. Fenelby handed Kitty"s baggage-checks to Tom"]
III
KITTY"S TRUNKS
When Mr. Fenelby went to the city in the morning he gave Kitty"s trunk checks to the expressman. When he returned to his home in the evening he found Kitty and Mrs. Fenelby on the porch, and Mrs.
Fenelby was explaining to her visitor, for about the tenth time, the workings of the Fenelby Domestic Tariff. She had explained to Kitty how the tariff had come to be adopted, how it was to supply an education fund for Bobberts--who was at that moment asleep in his crib, upstairs--and how every necessity brought into the house had to pay into Bobberts" bank ten per cent., and every luxury thirty per cent. Kitty was a dear, as was Mrs. Fenelby, but they were as different as cousins could well be, for while Mrs. Fenelby was the man"s ideal of a gentle domestic person, Kitty was the man"s ideal of a forceful, jolly girl, and as full of liveliness as a well behaved young lady could be. She was properly interested in Bobberts and admired him loudly, but in her heart she was not sorry that Mr.
Fenelby"s brother Will was to be a visitor at the house during her stay.
She did not show any unmaidenly curiosity in regard to Brother Will, but between doses of Bobberts and Tariff she managed to learn about all Mrs. Fenelby knew regarding Brother Will"s past, present and future, including a pretty minute description of his appearance, habits and beliefs.
Brother Will had arrived that very day, and on the way up from the station the Fenelbys had explained to him all about the Domestic Tariff, and also that until a bed could be sent out from the city he would have to find a bed wherever he could, and so it happened that he went right back to the city with Mr. Fenelby, and had not met Kitty, as he preferred to sleep in the city, rather than in the hammock on the porch.
There is an admirable natural honesty in women that prevents them from claiming that their husbands are perfection. In some this is so abnormally developed that, to be on the safe side, I suppose, they will not allow that their husbands have any virtues whatever; in others the trace of this type of honesty is so slight that they will claim to every one, except their dearest friends, that their husbands are the best in the world. The normal wife first announces that her husband is as near perfect as any man can be, and then proceeds to enumerate all his imperfections, bad humors, and annoying habits, under the impression, perhaps, that she is praising him. Mrs. Fenelby had been proceeding in somewhat this way in her conversation with Kitty, under the impression that she was showing Kitty how lovely and domestically perfect was her life, but Kitty gained from it only the impression that Mrs. Fenelby had become the slave of Mr. Fenelby and Bobberts.
The more Mrs. Fenelby explained the workings of the Domestic Tariff the more positive of this did Kitty become. It was Laura who paid all the household bills, and so Laura had to pay the tariff duty on whatever came into the house; it was Laura who had to give up her weekly box of candy because if she received it she had to pay twenty-four cents duty. To Kitty the Fenelby Domestic Tariff seemed to be a scheme concocted by Mr. Fenelby to make Laura provide an education fund for Bobberts. Poor Laura was evidently being misused and did not know it. Poor Laura must be rescued, and given that womanly freedom that women are supposed to long for, even when they don"t want it. Poor meek Laura needed some one to put a foot down, and Kitty felt that she had an admirable foot for that or any other purpose. She proposed to put it down.
When Mr. Fenelby entered his yard on his return from the city he stopped short, and then looked up to where the two young women were sitting on the porch.
"h.e.l.lo!" he said, "What is the matter with these trunks? Wouldn"t that expressman carry them upstairs? I declare, those fellows are getting too independent for comfort. Unless you hold a dollar tip out before them they won"t so much as turn around. Now, I distinctly told this fellow to carry these three trunks upstairs, and I said I would make it all right with him, and here he leaves them on the lawn. I hope, dear, you were at home when he came."
"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Fenelby, "I was, and you should not blame the poor man. I am sure he tried hard enough to carry them up. He actually insisted on carrying them up whether we wanted them up or not. He was quite rude about it. He said you had told him to carry them up and that he meant to do it whether we let him or not, and--and at last I had to give him a dollar to leave them down here."
"You--you gave him a dollar _not_ to carry these trunks upstairs!"
exclaimed Mr. Fenelby. "Did you say you _paid_ the man a dollar _not_ to carry them upstairs?"
"I had to," said Mrs. Fenelby. "It was the only way I could prevent him from doing it. He said you told him to carry them up, and that up they must go, if he had to break down the front door to do it. I think he must have been drinking, Tom, he used such awful language, and at last he got quite maudlin about it and sat down on one of the trunks and cried, actually cried! He said that for years and years he had refused to carry trunks upstairs, and that now, just when he had joined the Salvation Army, and was trying to lead a better life, and be kind and helpful and earn an extra dollar for his family by carrying trunks upstairs when gentlemen asked him to, I had to step in and refuse to let him carry trunks upstairs, and that this was the sort of thing that discouraged a poor man who was trying to make up for his past errors. So I gave him a dollar to leave them down here."
Mr. Fenelby looked at the three big trunks ruefully, and shook his head at them.
"Well," he said, "I suppose it is all right, Laura, but I can"t see why you wouldn"t let him take them up. You know I don"t enjoy that kind of work, and that I don"t think it is good for me."
"Kitty didn"t want them taken up," said Mrs. Fenelby, gently.
"She--she wanted them left down here."
"Down here?" asked Mr. Fenelby, as if dazed. "Down here on the gra.s.s?"
"Yes," said Kitty, lightly. "It was my idea. Laura had nothing to do with it at all. I thought it would be nice to have the trunks down here on the lawn. Everywhere I visit they always take my trunks up to my room, and it gets so tiresome always having the same thing happen, so I thought that this time I would have a variety and leave my trunks on the lawn. I never in my life left my trunks on a front lawn, and I wanted to see how it would be. You don"t think they will hurt the gra.s.s do you, Mr. Fenelby?"
Kitty asked this with such an air of sincerity that Mr. Fenelby seated himself on one of the trunks and looked up at her anxiously.
He could not recall that he had ever heard of any weakness of mind in Kitty or in her family, but he could not doubt his ears.
"But--but--" he said, "but you don"t mean to leave them here, do you?"
Kitty smiled down at him rea.s.suringly.
"Of course, if it is going to harm the gra.s.s at all, Mr. Fenelby, I sha"n"t think of it," she said. "I know that sometimes when a board or anything lies on the gra.s.s a long time the gra.s.s under the board gets all white, and if the trunks are going to make white spots on your lawn, I"ll have them removed, but I thought that if we moved the trunks around to different places every day it would avoid that.