“’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.