n empty suit-case--so it
doesn't go in at ten per cent., so it must be a luxury, and it pays
thirty per cent."

"That suit-case," said Billy, looking at it with a calculating eye,
"is not worth thirty per cent. of what it is worth. It is
worthless, and I wouldn't give ten per cent. of nothing for it. It
stays outside. So I pay nothing. I go in free. Unless I have to pay
on myself."

"You don't have to," said Kitty, "although I suppose Laura and Tom
think you are a luxury."

"Don't you think I am one?" asked Billy.

"No, I don't," said Kitty frankly, "and when you know me better, you
will not ask such a foolish question. Where ever I am, there a young
man is a necessity."

V

THE PINK SHIRT-WAIST

The morning after Billy Fenelby's arrival at the Fenelby home he
awakened unusually early, as one is apt to awaken in a strange bed,
and he lay awhile thinking over the events of the previous evening.
He was more than ever convinced that Kitty was not the kind of girl
he liked. He felt that she had made a bare-faced effort to flirt
with him the evening before, and that she was just the kind of a
girl that was apt to be troublesome to a bachelor. She was the kind
of a girl that would demand a great deal of attention and expect it
as a natural right, and then, when she received it, make the man
feel that he had been attentive in quite another way, and that the
only fair thing would be to propose. And he felt that she was the
kind of girl that no man could propose to with any confidence
whatever. She would be just as likely to accept him as not, and
having accepted him, she would be just as likely to expect him to
marry her as not. He felt that he was in a very ticklish situation.
He saw that Kitty was the sort of girl that would take any air of
rude indifference he might assume to be a challenge, and any comely
polite attention to be serious love making. He saw that the only
safe thing for him to do would be to run away, but, since he had
seen Kitty, that was the last thing in the world that he would have
thought of doing. He decided that he would constitute her bright
eyes and red lips to be a mental warning sign reading "Danger" in
large letters, and that whenever he saw them he would be as wary as
a rabbit and yet as brave as a lion.

He next felt a sincere regret that he had refused to pay the duty on
the clean collar he had brought with him, and that he had left on
the railing of the porch. He got out of