“I wish you wouldn’t mention that,” said Mr. Fenelby with some annoyance.
“Oh, I know all about that,” said Billy, warmly. “You say that because you don’t like to be thanked for all these nice, thoughtful things you do for a fellow. But I do thank you—just as much as if you had found the collar and had brought it up to me. That was all right. You would have paid the duty on it, and that would have been all right. But what do you think Miss Kitty did? Why do you think you could not find that collar? Do you know what she did? She brought that collar into the house—smuggled it in—and she had the nerve, the actual nerve, to give it to me. And I took it. I couldn’t do anything else, could I, when a girl offered it to me? I couldn’t say I wouldn’t take it, could I? I had to be a gentleman about it. And then she tried to get me into trouble by telling you I would come down to breakfast wearing that collar. She tried to make out that I was a smuggler.”
“I suppose it was just a bit of fun,” said Mr. Fenelby. “Girls are that way, some of them.”
“Well, I want it understood that that collar is in the house, and that I didn’t bring it in,” said Billy, “and that if this Domestic Tariff business is to be carried out fairly it is Miss Kitty’s business to pay the duty on it. I want to set myself right with you. But the thing I wanted to speak about was far more serious. Do you know what she had on this morning?”
“What she had on?” asked Mr. Fenelby. “What did she have on?”
“She had on a pink shirt-waist,” said Billy fiercely. “That is what she had on. Right at breakfast there, in plain sight of everyone. A pink shirt-waist!”
“Well, that’s all right, isn’t it?” asked Mr. Fenelby, doubtfully. “It’s proper to wear a pink shirt-waist at breakfast, isn’t it? I think Laura wears shirt-waists at breakfast sometimes. I’m sure it’s all right. An informal home breakfast like that.”
“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?”