and go home!"

"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.

He raised his pink hands and his head, rolled over in the porch
rocker in which he had been lying, and fell to the porch floor with
a bump. A curtain could not have ended the scene more quickly. Never
in his life had he been so cruelly treated as by this faithless
rocking-chair. He had reposed his simple faith in it, and it threw
him to earth, and then rocked joyously across him. His voice arose
in short, piercing yells. He turned purple with rage and pain. He
drew up his knees and simply, soulfully screamed. Up and down the
street neighbors came out upon their verandas, napkins in hand, and
stared wonderingly at the Fenelby porch. Kitty and Billy stood like
a wooden Mr. and Mrs. Noah in the toy ark, but Mr. Fenelby and Laura
sprang to Bobberts' aid and gathered him into their arms, ordering
each other to do things, and soothing Bobberts at the same time.

The Fenelby Domestic