The Cheerful Smugglers
afford to give the man a dollar not to take them in! That is woman’s logic!”

“Oh! a dollar!” said Kitty.[Pg 74] “If it was only a matter of a dollar! I hope you don’t think, Mr. Fenelby, that I travel with only ten dollars’ worth of baggage! No, indeed! I simply cannot afford to pay ten per cent. duty on what is in those trunks, and so I prefer to let them remain on the lawn. I wrote Laura that I expected to be treated as one of the family while I was visiting her, and if the Domestic Tariff is part of the way the family is treated I certainly expect to live up to it. Now, don’t blame Laura, for she was not only willing to have the trunks come in without paying duty, but insisted that they should.”

[Pg 74]

Mr. Fenelby looked very grave. He was in a perplexing situation. [Pg 75]He certainly did not wish to appear inhospitable, and yet Laura had had no right to say that the trunks could enter the house duty free. The only way such an unusual alteration in the Domestic Tariff could be made was by act of the Family Congress, and he very well knew that if once the matter of revising the tariff was taken up it was beyond the ken of man where it would end. He preferred to stand pat on the tariff as it had been originally adopted.

[Pg 75]

“I told her,” said Kitty, “that she had no right to throw off the duty on my trunks, at all, and that I wouldn’t have it, and I didn’t.”

[Pg 76]“Well, Tom,” said Mrs. Fenelby, “you know perfectly well that we can’t leave those trunks out on the lawn. It would not only be absolutely foolish to do that, but cruel to Kitty. A girl simply can’t visit away from home without trunks, and it is absolutely necessary that Kitty should have her trunks.”

[Pg 76]

“‘Necessities, ten per cent.,’” quoted Kitty.

“But, my dear,” said Mr. Fenelby, softly,[Pg 77] “we really can’t break all our household rules just because Kitty has brought three trunks, can we? Kitty does not expect us to do that, and I think she looks at it in a very rational manner. I like the spirit she has evinced.”

[Pg 77]

“Very well, then,” said Mrs. Fenelby, “you must find some way to take care of those trunks, for we cannot leave them on the lawn.”

“Why can’t we take them to some neighbor’s house?” asked Kitty. “I am sure some neighbor 
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