“I don’t know,” he said, abstractedly. “I mean, yes, of course they will. But they will get rained on. You don’t want your trunks rained on, you know. Trunks aren’t meant to be rained on. It isn’t good for them.” A thought came to him suddenly. “You and Laura haven’t quarreled, have you?” he asked, for he thought that perhaps that was why Kitty would not have her trunks carried up.
“Indeed not!” cried Kitty, putting her arm affectionately around Laura’s waist.
“I—I thought perhaps you had,” faltered Mr. Fenelby. “I thought—that is to say—I was afraid perhaps you were going away again. I thought you were going to make us a good, long visit—”
“Indeed I am,” said Kitty, cheerfully. “I am going to stay weeks, and weeks, and weeks. I am going to stay until you are all tired to death of me, and beg me to begone.”
“That is good,” said Mr. Fenelby, with an attempt at pleasure. “But don’t you think, since you are going to do what we want you to do, and stay for weeks, and weeks, and weeks, that you had better let your trunks be taken up to your room? Or—I’ll tell you what we’ll do! Suppose we just take the trunks into the lower hall?”
He felt pretty certainly, now, that Kitty must have had a little touch of, say, sunstroke, or something of that kind, and he went on in a gently argumentative tone.
“Just into the lower hall,” he said. “That would be different from having them in your room, and it would save my grass. I worked hard to get this lawn looking as it does now, Kitty, and I cannot deny that big trunks like these will not do it any good. Let us say we will put the trunks in the lower hall. Then they will be safe, too. No one can steal them there. A front lawn is a rather conspicuous place for trunks. And what will the neighbors say, too, if we leave the trunks on the lawn? Why shouldn’t we put the trunks in the lower hall?”
“Well,” said Kitty, “I can’t afford it, that is why. Really, Mr. Fenelby, I can’t afford to have those three trunks brought into the house.”
“And yet,” said Mr. Fenelby, with just the slightest hint of impatience, “you girls could afford to give the man a dollar not to take them in! That is woman’s logic!”
“Oh! a dollar!” said Kitty. “If it was only a matter of a dollar! I hope you don’t think, Mr. Fenelby, that I travel with only ten dollars’ worth of baggage! No, indeed! I simply cannot afford to pay ten per cent. duty on what is in those trunks, and so I prefer to let them remain on the lawn. I wrote Laura that I expected to be treated as one of the family while I was visiting her, and if the Domestic Tariff is part of the way the family is treated I certainly expect to live up to it. Now, don’t blame Laura, for she was not only willing to have the trunks come in without paying duty, but insisted that they should.”