Family life -- Fiction; Humorous stories; Saving and investment -- Fiction
The more Mrs. Fenelby explained the workings of the Domestic Tariff
the more positive of this did Kitty become. It was Laura who paid
all the household bills, and so Laura had to pay the tariff duty on
whatever came into the house; it was Laura who had to give up her
weekly box of candy because if she received it she had to pay
twenty-four cents duty. To Kitty the Fenelby Domestic Tariff seemed
to be a scheme concocted by Mr. Fenelby to make Laura provide an
education fund for Bobberts. Poor Laura was evidently being misused
and did not know it. Poor Laura must be rescued, and given that
womanly freedom that women are supposed to long for, even when they
don't want it. Poor meek Laura needed some one to put a foot down,
and Kitty felt that she had an admirable foot for that or any other
purpose. She proposed to put it down.
When Mr. Fenelby entered his yard on his return from the city he
stopped short, and then looked up to where the two young women were
sitting on the porch.
"Hello!" he said, "What is the matter with these trunks? Wouldn't
that expressman carry them upstairs? I declare, those fellows are
getting too independent for comfort. Unless you hold a dollar tip
out before them they won't so much as turn around. Now, I distinctly
told this fellow to carry these three trunks upstairs, and I said I
would make it all right with him, and here he leaves them on the
lawn. I hope, dear, you were at home when he came."
"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Fenelby, "I was, and you should not blame the
poor man. I am sure he tried hard enough to carry them up. He
actually insisted on carrying them up whether we wanted them up or
not. He was quite rude about it. He said you had told him to carry
them up and that he meant to do it whether we let him or not,
and--and at last I had to give him a dollar to leave them down
here."
"You--you gave him a dollar _not_ to carry these trunks upstairs!"
exclaimed Mr. Fenelby. "Did you say you _paid_ the man a dollar
_not_ to carry them upstairs?"
"I had to," said Mrs. Fenelby. "It was the only way I could prevent
him from doing it. He said you told him to carry them up, and that
up they must go, if he had to break down the front door to do it. I
think he must have been drinking, Tom, he used such awful language,
and at last he got quite maudlin about it and sat down on one of the
trunks and cried, actually cried! He said that for years and years
he had refused to carry trunks upstairs, and that now, just when he
had joined the Salvation Army, and was trying to lead a better life,
and be kind and helpful and earn an extra dollar for his family by
carrying trunks upstairs when gentlemen asked him to, I had to step
in and refuse to let him carry trunks upstairs, and that this was
the sort of thing that discouraged a poor man who was trying to make
up for his past errors. So I gave him a dollar to leave them down
here."
Mr. Fenelby looked at the three big trunks ruefully, and shook his
head at them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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