“Tom,” said Mrs. Fenelby, “that is just what we will do!” And so it was settled.
By the time Kitty and Billy returned loiteringly from church Mr. Fenelby had progressed pretty well through four of the sixteen sections of the Sunday paper, and Mrs. Fenelby had Bobberts washed and dressed and was in the kitchen preparing dinner, which on Sunday was supposed to be at noon, but which, this Sunday, threatened to be about two o’clock. Kitty threw off her hat and dropped her umbrella in the hall and rushed for the kitchen. Billy merely glanced into the parlor, and seeing Tom holding the grim funny page uncompromisingly before his face, strolled out to the hammock.
“Laura,” cried Kitty, “you must let me help you! And what do you think? We met Doctor Stafford, and he did prescribe whisky and rock candy for Bridget’s cold! So I fixed everything all right. I rushed Billy around to Bridget’s sister’s and Bridget is just getting over her cold, so she was glad to come back to you. She says she never, never drinks except under her doctor’s orders, and she said that if you hadn’t been so hasty—”
Mrs. Fenelby dropped the potato she was slicing. Her pretty mouth hardened.
“Kitty!” she exclaimed. “Now I shall never forgive you! I will never have Bridget in this kitchen again! It wasn’t only that she drank, it was her awful, awful deceitfulness. It was that, Kitty, more than anything else. I won’t have people about me who will not live up to the tariff poor dear Tom worked and worried to make! You may smuggle, Kitty, if you must be so low, and I certainly have no control over Billy, but my servants must not break the rules of this house. If that Bridget dares to put her head inside of this door I will send her about her business.”
“Laura,” said Kitty, “I wish you would be reasonable—like Billy and me. We talked it all over on the way to church, and we saw that it was Tom’s crazy old tariff that was making all the trouble and driving Bridget away and everything, and we decided we would stop the tariff right away.”
Laura’s chin went into the air and her eyes flashed.
“You will stop the tariff!” she cried, turning red. “What right have you to stop anything in this house, Kitty? And it isn’t a crazy tariff. It was a splendid idea, and no one but Tom would ever have thought of it, and it worked all right until you and Billy began spoiling it!”
“But I thought you wanted it stopped,” said Kitty.
“I don’t!” exclaimed Laura, bursting into tears. “It is a nice, lovely tariff, and if I ever said I didn’t want it, it was because you aggravated me. I won’t have it stopped. I won’t be so mean to anything dear old Tom starts. It’s Bobberts’ tariff. You ought to think more of Bobberts than to suggest such a thing, if you don’t love me.”