n the floor--they only cost five cents--or ask,
innocently: "Did I crack this plate, or was it already cracked?" By
a judicious use of these little wreckers of consecutive speech Mr.
and Mrs. Fenelby, over the dishes, reached a perfect understanding
and forgot their quarrel. Mr. Fenelby said she was perfectly right
in hiding the set of Eugene Field in the attic, since it was
intended as a surprise for him on the anniversary of their wedding,
and the payment of the tariff duty on it would have divulged the
secret; and Mrs. Fenelby agreed that he was doing exactly the right
thing when he did the same, and for the same reason; but they both
agreed that Kitty and Billy had acted rather shamelessly in the
matter of smuggling.

"I know Billy," said Mr. Fenelby, "and I know him well. I won't say
anything about Kitty, for she is your guest, but Billy would smuggle
anything he could lay his hands on. He is a lawyer, and a young one,
and all you have to do is to show a young lawyer a law, and he
immediately begins to look for ways to get around it. I don't say
this to excuse him. I just say it."

"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