Ellis Butler - The Cheerful Smugglers

“Hello!” he said, “What is the matter with these trunks? Wouldn’t that expressman carry them upstairs? I declare, those fellows are getting too independent for comfort. Unless you hold a dollar tip out before them they won’t so much as turn around. Now, I distinctly told this fellow to carry these three trunks upstairs, and I said I would make it all right with him, and here he leaves them on the lawn. I hope, dear, you were at home when he came.”

“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. Fenelby, “I was, and you should not blame the poor man. I am sure he tried hard enough to carry them up. He actually insisted on carrying them up whether we wanted them up or not. He was quite rude about it. He said you had told him to carry them up and that he meant to do it whether we let him or not, and – and at last I had to give him a dollar to leave them down here.”

“You – you gave him a dollar not to carry these trunks upstairs!” exclaimed Mr. Fenelby. “Did you say you paid the man a dollar not to carry them upstairs?”

“I had to,” said Mrs. Fenelby. “It was the only way I could prevent him from doing it. He said you told him to carry them up, and that up they must go, if he had to break down the front door to do it. I think he must have been drinking, Tom, he used such awful language, and at last he got quite maudlin about it and sat down on one of the trunks and cried, actually cried! He said that for years and years he had refused to carry trunks upstairs, and that now, just when he had joined the Salvation Army, and was trying to lead a better life, and be kind and helpful and earn an extra dollar for his family by carrying trunks upstairs when gentlemen asked him to, I had to step in and refuse to let him carry trunks upstairs, and that this was the sort of thing that discouraged a poor man who was trying to make up for his past errors. So I gave him a dollar to leave them down here.”

Mr. Fenelby looked at the three big trunks ruefully, and shook his head at them.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose it is all right, Laura, but I can’t see why you wouldn’t let him take them up. You know I don’t enjoy that kind of work, and that I don’t think it is good for me.”

“Kitty didn’t want them taken up,” said Mrs. Fenelby, gently. “She – she wanted them left down here.”

“Down here?” asked Mr. Fenelby, as if dazed. “Down here on the grass?”

“Yes,” said Kitty, lightly. “It was my idea. Laura had nothing to do with it at all. I thought it would be nice to have the trunks down here on the lawn. Everywhere I visit they always take my trunks up to my room, and it gets so tiresome always having the same thing happen, so I thought that this time I would have a variety and leave my trunks on the lawn. I never in my life left my trunks on a front lawn, and I wanted to see how it would be. You don’t think they will hurt the grass do you, Mr. Fenelby?”

Kitty asked this with such an air of sincerity that Mr. Fenelby seated himself on one of the trunks and looked up at her anxiously. He could not recall that he had ever heard of any weakness of mind in Kitty or in her family, but he could not doubt his ears.

“But – but – ” he said, “but you don’t mean to leave them here, do you?”

Kitty smiled down at him reassuringly.

“Of course, if it is going to harm the grass at all, Mr. Fenelby, I sha’n’t think of it,” she said. “I know that sometimes when a board or anything lies on the grass a long time the grass under the board gets all white, and if the trunks are going to make white spots on your lawn, I’ll have them removed, but I thought that if we moved the trunks around to different places every day it would avoid that. But you know more about that than I do. Do you think they will make white places on the lawn, Mr. Fenelby?”

“I don’t know,” he said, abstractedly. “I mean, yes, of course they will. But they will get rained on. You don’t want your trunks rained on, you know. Trunks aren’t meant to be rained on. It isn’t good for them.” A thought came to him suddenly. “You and Laura haven’t quarreled, have you?” he asked, for he thought that perhaps that was why Kitty would not have her trunks carried up.

“Indeed not!” cried Kitty, putting her arm affectionately around Laura’s waist.

“I – I thought perhaps you had,” faltered Mr. Fenelby. “I thought – that is to say – I was afraid perhaps you were going away again. I thought you were going to make us a good, long visit – ”

“Indeed I am,” said Kitty, cheerfully. “I am going to stay weeks, and weeks, and weeks. I am going to stay until you are all tired to death of me, and beg me to begone.”

“That is good,” said Mr. Fenelby, with an attempt at pleasure. “But don’t you think, since you are going to do what we want you to do, and stay for weeks, and weeks, and weeks, that you had better let your trunks be taken up to your room? Or – I’ll tell you what we’ll do! Suppose we just take the trunks into the lower hall?”

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