wing she had taken up was evidence that she
had suspicion in her mind. Kitty clasped her hands behind her back
and laughed.

"You have been looking into my closet!" she declared. "You sit there
and try to look innocent, and you know everything that I have, down
to the last ribbon! Well, I just can't afford to pay your old
tariff. It would simply ruin me. And the men will never know,
anyway. They don't notice such things. I could wear a different
dress every day, and they wouldn't know it."

"But I know it," said Laura, reprovingly. "Do you think it is right,
Kitty, to smuggle things into the house that way? Is it fair to
Bobberty?"

"There!" exclaimed Kitty, dropping a jingling coin into Bobberts'
bank. "There is a quarter for him! That is every cent I can afford."

"That wouldn't pay the duty on one single shirt-waist," said Laura,
quietly.

"It wouldn't," admitted Kitty, frankly, bending over Laura and
taking her face in her hands. She turned the face upward and looked
in its eyes. Then she bent down and whispered in Laura's ear, and
laughed as a blush suffused Laura's face.

"I was short of money," said Laura with dignity, "and I mean to pay
the duty as soon as I get my next week's allowance. I simply had to
have a new purse, and you coaxed me to buy it. It wasn't smuggling
at all."

"Wasn't it?" asked Kitty. "Then why did you ask me to leave it in
my room, instead of showing it to Tom? Smuggler!"

Mrs. Fenelby arose and walked away. She turned to the kitchen and
opened the door. She was just in time to see Bridget lower a bottle
from her lips and hastily conceal it behind her skirts.

"Bridget!" she exclaimed sharply, with horror.

"'Tis th' doctor's orders, ma'am," said Bridget. "'Tis for me cold."

She coughed as well as she could, but it was not a very successful
cough. Mrs. Fenelby hesitated a moment, and then she pointed to the
door.

"You may pack your trunk, Bridget," she said, and Bridget jerked off
her apron and stamped out of the kitchen.

"But perhaps the poor thing was taking it by her doctor's orders,"
suggested Kitty, when Mrs. Fenelby, red eyed, went into the front
rooms again.

"She'll have to go," said Mrs. Fenelby, dolefully. "I can't have a
drinking servant where poor, dear Bobberts is. But that isn't what
makes me feel so badly. It is to think how that girl has deceived
me. I treated her just as I would treat one of the family, and she
pretended to be so fond of Bobberts, and