Chapter 4

"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 first thing. 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 she has. 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.

VI

BRIDGET

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. The suburban 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 rein is 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 in that 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 method of 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 there and 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 his education, 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 the hall, 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.

VII

THE AMATEUR DETECTIVE

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 the hammock 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 he liked 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 set to 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 entirely different 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 of stuff 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 buy anything, 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 that _I_ had just reached the landing on _my_ way up, when you handed me the collar. _You_ couldn't have 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. _I_ was 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; you brought 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 it there. 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 few dollars 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 and glancing 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?"