his guests pay the duty too! It is the most
unhospitable thing I ever heard of!"

"Isn't it?" agreed Billy, promptly. "It makes us feel as if we had
no right to be here. A man can't afford to bring even the things he
needs, when he has to pay that exorbitant duty on everything. And it
is so much worse on you. Now I can get along with very little. A man
can, you know. But how is a girl going to do without all the things
she is accustomed to? I believe," he said, confidentially lowering
his voice and glancing at the house, "I believe, if I were a girl,
I would be tempted to smuggle in the things I really needed."

"Would you?" asked Kitty, sweetly. "But then you men have different
ideas of such things, don't you? You don't think a girl would do
such a thing, do you? Would you advise it? I don't know whether--how
would you go about smuggling, if you wanted to? But I don't believe
it would be honest, would it?"

She turned up to him two such innocent eyes that Billy almost
blushed. There is no satisfaction in knowing a person is guilty, the
satisfaction is in making the person look guilty, and Kitty looked
like an innocent child questioning the face of a tempter and seeing
guilt there. He longed to ask her outright how she happened to have
a pink shirt-waist, but he did not dare to, lest he put her at once
on her guard. He felt a great desire to take her by the shoulders
and shake her out of her calm superiority. It was very trying to
him. No girl had a right to act as if she thought herself the
superior of any man. Just to show her how inferior she was he
dropped the subject of the tariff entirely and began a conversation
on Ibsen. He did not know much about Ibsen but he knew a little and
he could lead her beyond her depths and make her feel her
inferiority that way. Kitty listened to him with an amused smile,
and then told him a few things about Ibsen, quoted a few
enlightening pages from Hauptmann, routed him, slaughtered him
gently as he fled from position to position, and ended by asking him
if he had ever read anything of Ibsen's. It was very trying to
Billy. This girl evidently had no respect for the superior brain of
man whatever.

"I think the lawn needs sprinkling," he said, coldly.

"Do you know how it should be done?" she asked, and that was the
final insult. Nice girls never asked such questions in such a way.
Nice girls looked up with wonder in their eyes and said, "Oh! You
men know how to do everything