"Laura!" exclaimed Kitty, with horror, recoiling from her, while the two men stood sheepishly. "Why, Laura Fenelby! If you say such a thing I shall go right up and pack my clothes and go home!"
"What clothes?" asked Mr. Fenelby, meaningly. Kitty ignored the insinuation.
"You three should not dare to look me in the face and talk about smuggling," she declared. "You dare to accuse me. I would like to have you explain about that box upstairs first."
Mr. Fenelby and Billy and Mrs. Fenelby paled. For one moment there was perfect silence while Kitty, with folded arms, looked at them scornfully. Then, with strange simultaneousness, all three opened their mouths and said:
"I"ll explain about that box!"
IX
BOBBERTS INTERVENES
Kitty stood scornfully triumphant awaiting the next words of the guilty trio, and three more cowed and guilt-stricken smugglers never faced an equally guilty accuser with such uncomfortable feelings.
Billy was sorry he had ever tried to fabricate the story about Mr.
Fenelby having asked him to bring the box of cigars home; Mr.
Fenelby wished he had left the set of Eugene Field"s works at the office, and Mrs. Fenelby was, perhaps, the most worried of all, for she did not know whether to admit her guilt and own that she had brought a set of Eugene Field into the house without paying the duty, or to annihilate the accusing Kitty by declaring that Kitty had a whole closet full of smuggled garments. It was a trying situation.
In a drama this would have been the cue for the curtain to fall with a rush, ending the act and leaving the audience a s.p.a.ce to wonder how the complication could ever be untangled, but on the Fenelby"s porch there was no curtain to fall. So Bobberts fell instead.
He raised his pink hands and his head, rolled over in the porch rocker in which he had been lying, and fell to the porch floor with a b.u.mp. A curtain could not have ended the scene more quickly. Never in his life had he been so cruelly treated as by this faithless rocking-chair. He had reposed his simple faith in it, and it threw him to earth, and then rocked joyously across him. His voice arose in short, piercing yells. He turned purple with rage and pain. He drew up his knees and simply, soulfully screamed. Up and down the street neighbors came out upon their verandas, napkins in hand, and stared wonderingly at the Fenelby porch. Kitty and Billy stood like a wooden Mr. and Mrs. Noah in the toy ark, but Mr. Fenelby and Laura sprang to Bobberts" aid and gathered him into their arms, ordering each other to do things, and soothing Bobberts at the same time.
The Fenelby Domestic Tariff was entirely forgotten.
"Well!" exclaimed Mrs. Fenelby, when Bobberts had tapered off from the yells of rage to the steady weeping of injured feelings. "What are you standing there like two sticks for? Can"t you see poor, dear little Bobberts is nearly killed? Why don"t you do something?"
There was really nothing they could do. Mr. and Mrs. Fenelby made such a compact crowd around Bobberts that no one else could squeeze in, but Kitty dropped on her knees and edged up to the crowd, murmuring, "Poor Bobberts! Poor Bobberts!"
Billy stood awkwardly, feeling in his pockets. He had an idea that if he could find something to jingle before Bobberts it might be about the right thing to do, but his hand touched one of the smuggled cigars, and he withdrew it as if his fingers had been burnt. This poor, weeping child was the Bobberts he had been cheating of a few pennies. He touched Kitty diffidently on the shoulder.
"Can"t I do something?" he asked, pleadingly, and Kitty took pity on him.
"Heat some water; very hot!" she said. She was not a baby expert, but she felt that hot water would not be a bad thing to have handy in a case like this. There is one good thing about hot water--if it is not wanted it does no harm, for if allowed to stand it will get cool again--and it pleased her to be able to order Billy to do something. The prompt and eager manner in which he obeyed the order pleased her still more. He ran all the way to the kitchen.
Half an hour later he cautiously carried a dish-pan full of water to the porch and stared in amazement at the place where he had left Bobberts and his parents. They were gone! He felt that he had not been quite as quick with the water as he might have been, for the only burner that had been lighted on the gas range was the "simmerer," and that had only a flame as large around as a dollar, and not strong, but he had not dared to light another. He had a dim remembrance that stoves of some kind sometimes exploded, and he did not want to risk an explosion by tampering with an unknown stove. He felt that a stove and Bobberts both exploding at the same time would have been more than the Fenelbys could have borne. As he stood holding the pan of hot water well away from him the sound of the click of knives and forks on china came to him through the open window. Only a little of the hot water spilled over the edge of the pan upon his legs as he opened the screen door and entered the hall.
He walked carefully, bent over and holding the pan at arm"s length, and as he entered the dining room the three diners looked up at him in open mouthed surprise. They had forgotten all about Billy.
"Here it is," said Billy, with modest pride and an air of accomplishment. "It is good and hot. I let it get as hot as it could."
The blank amazement that had dulled the face of Kitty gave way to a look of understanding and a smile as she remembered having ordered him to get hot water, but the amazement on the faces of Mr. Fenelby and his wife remained as blank as ever.
"It is hot water," said Billy, explaining. "I heated it. What shall I do with it?"
The sodden surprise on Mr. Fenelby"s face melted away. A dish-pan full of hot water served during the course of a cold dinner had amusing elements, and Mr. Fenelby smiled. So did Mrs. Fenelby.
Everybody smiled but Billy. He was serious.
"Well," he said, with a touch of impatience, "these handles are hot.
I can"t stand here holding them all night. What do you want me to do with this hot water?"
"What do you want to do with it?" asked Mr. Fenelby. "What do you usually do with a panful of hot water when you have one? You might take a bath, if you want to. You will find the bath-room at the top of the stairs, first turn to the left. Run along, and don"t stay in the water too long."
Mrs. Fenelby and Kitty laughed, and Mr. Fenelby smiled broadly at his own humor. Billy blushed.
"I heated it for Bobberts," he said, stiffly.
"Thank you!" said Mr. Fenelby. "But we won"t boil Bobberts this evening, Billy. Not just now, anyhow. We like to oblige, but we can"t be expected to boil our only son just because you turn up in the middle of a meal with a pan of hot water. If we ever boil him it will not be in the middle of a meal. Please don"t insist."
Billy reddened to the roots of his hair. Mrs. Fenelby was laughing openly and Tom was pleased with the excellence of his joke. Billy raised his head angrily and strode out of the room, and Kitty, from whose face the smile had fled, started up with blazing eyes.
"I think you are horrid!" she cried, turning to Bobberts" laughing parents. "I think you ought to thank him instead of making fun of him. I told him to heat the water, because Bobberts was hurt, and I thought you might want it, and because he was trying to be helpful and--and nice, you sit there and laugh at him. If you want to make fun of anyone, make fun of me! I suppose you will!"
"Why, Kitty!" cried Mrs. Fenelby.
"Yes!" cried Kitty. "I suppose you will. That seems to be what you want to do--make your guests as uncomfortable as you can. You don"t want us here. You make up this foolish tariff to make trouble, and you drive away your servants so that we feel that we are imposing on you, and you make fun of us when we try to be helpful--"
"Why, Kitty!" exclaimed Mrs. Fenelby again.
"You do!" Kitty declared. "I"m surprised at you, Laura Fenelby, I am indeed. I"m surprised that you should let your husband dictate to you, and make you his slave with his tariffs and such things, but you like it. Very well, be his slave if you want to. But I can see one thing--Billy and I are not wanted in this house. You and your husband just want to be alone and enjoy your selfish house. The best thing Billy and I can do is to go. I can see very plainly now, Laura, that you got up that silly tariff just to drive us out of the house. Very well, we will go!"
She turned from the amazed parents of Bobberts to the amazed Billy who was standing in the hall with the inoffensive pan of hot water in his hands, and put her hand on his arm.
"Come!" she said. "I am going up to pack my trunks."
For a moment after the shock the Fenelbys sat in surprised silence, looking blankly each into the other"s face, and then Laura spoke.
"Tom," she gasped, "they mustn"t leave this way!"
Mr. Fenelby slowly folded his napkin, and as slowly placed it in the ring. Then he laid the ring gently on the table and arranged his knife and fork side by side on his plate, as prescribed by the guide books to good manners.
"She said she was going up stairs to pack her trunks," he said with deliberation. "To pack her trunks. If she has enough to pack into trunks, Laura, there has been smuggling going on in this house."
Mrs. Fenelby folded her napkin as slowly as her husband had just folded his, and she kept her eyes on it as she answered.
"Tom," she said, "do you think it is quite the time now to talk of smuggling? Wouldn"t it be better if you went up and apologized to Kitty and Billy?"
"Laura," said Mr. Fenelby, "it is always time to talk of smuggling.
The foundation of the home is order; order can only be maintained by living up to such rules as are made; the Fenelby Domestic Tariff is more than a rule, it is a law. If we let the laws of our home be trampled under foot by whoever chooses the whole thing totters, sways and falls. The home is wrecked and sorrow and dissention come.
Dissention leads to misunderstanding and divorce. That is why I am strict. That is why I refuse to let two strangers wreck our whole lives by ignoring the Domestic Tariff. If they do not like the laws of our little Commonwealth, they can go. The door is open!"
"Thomas Fenelby," said his wife, "I think you are horrid! I never knew anything so unhospitable in my life. It isn"t as if no one in this house ever broke that tariff law except Kitty and Billy; you haven"t explained about that box--"
Mr. Fenelby reddened and he looked at his wife sternly.
"Do you mean the box I found hidden under the eaves in the attic, addressed to you, my dear?" he asked with cutting sweetness, and Mrs. Fenelby, in turn, grew red and gasped.