"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! Most girls 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 all bores, 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 a.s.sociate 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 a.s.sessed on what the package contains and not on the package itself. If it is not a new suit-case you 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 cla.s.sed 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?"
[Ill.u.s.tration: ""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 cla.s.s. 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."
V
THE PINK SHIRT-WAIST
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 apt to 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 would take any air of rude indifference he might a.s.sume 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 const.i.tute 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 the clean 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 a.s.sessing a duty of ten per cent.
on everything that came into the house (and thirty per cent. on luxuries) might fill up Bobberts" 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 surrept.i.tiously, was smuggling, then--
Billy stopped short at the screen door. From there he could see the spot on the railing where he had put the 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 gra.s.s and 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 idea _you_ would 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 of the 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 misdemeanor from 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."