“Well, you know how women are,” said Mrs. Fenelby. “As sure as you get two or three women who have been abroad into a group they will begin telling how and what they were able to smuggle in when they came through the custom house. Some of them enjoy the smuggling part better than all the rest of their trips abroad, so what could you expect of Kitty when she had a perpetual custom house to smuggle things through? She looks on it as a sort of game, and the one that smuggles the most is the winner. I don’t say this to excuse her. But it is so.”
“I am not the least sorry that Billy is offended, if he is,” said Mr. Fenelby, between plates; “but if you wish I will apologize to Kitty, although I don’t see why I should. The thing I am worrying about is Bobberts. I like this tariff plan, and I think it is a good way to raise money—if anyone ever pays the tariff duties—but I don’t feel as if I was treating Bobberts right. Every time I put money in his bank in payment of the tariff duty on a thing I have brought into the house I feel that I am doing Bobberts a wrong. And the more I put in the more guilty I feel.”
“Of course it is all for his education fund,” said Mrs. Fenelby.
“I know it,” said Mr. Fenelby, “and that is what makes me feel so small and miserable when I pay my ten or thirty per cent. duty. Bobberts is my only son, and the dearest and sweetest baby that ever lived, and I ought to be glad to give money for his education fund voluntarily and freely; and yet we treat him as if we hated him and had to be forced to give him a few cents a day. We act as if he was nothing but a government treasury deficit, and instead of giving joyously and gladly because we love him, we act as if we had to have laws made to force us to give. I feel it more every time I have to pay tariff duty into his bank. I tell you, Laura, it isn’t treating Bobberts in the right spirit. If he could understand he would be hurt and offended to think his parents were the kind that had to be compelled to give him an education, as if he were a reformatory child or a Home for something or other. Any tax is always unpopular, and that means it is annoying and vexatious; and what I am afraid of is that we will get to dislike Bobberts because we feel we are injuring him. I don’t mind the tariff, myself, but I do want to be fair and square with Bobberts. He’s the only child we have, Laura.”
“Oh, Tom!” exclaimed Mrs. Fenelby, taking her hands out of the dish water; “do you think we have gone too far to make it all right again? Do you think we have hurt our love for him, or weakened it, or—or anything? If I thought so I should never, never forgive myself!”
“I hope we haven’t,” said Mr. Fenelby, seriously; “but we must not take any more chances. If this thing goes on we will become quite hardened toward Bobberts, and cease to love him altogether.”
“We will stop this tariff right this very minute!” cried Mrs. Fenelby joyously. “I am so glad, Tom. I just hated the old thing!”
Mr. Fenelby shook his head slowly and Mrs. Fenelby’s face lost its radiance and became questioningly fear-struck.
“What is it?” she asked, anxiously. “Can’t we stop? Must we keep on with it forever and forever?”
“You forget the Congress of the Commonwealth of Bobberts,” said Mr. Fenelby. “The tariff law was passed by the congress, and it can only be repealed by the congress, with Bobberts present.”