“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 space 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.