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“I’ve wondered sometimes if we couldn’t just have the furnace man take out the sawdust and put in something else or—Theo, wouldn’t you like to run into Whaley & Baumgarten’s one of these days, and price all of the new fireless cookers?” beamed Mrs. Duke.

“Too busy. ”

In a grieved, spacious manner Mrs. Duke reproved: “Well, my dear, I certainly am too busy, what with the party for the new rector and his bride—”

“Call up the store. Tell ’em to send up a good cooker on trial,” said Theo.

“But these things have to be done with care and thought—”

Theo was stalking away as she retorted: “Not by me they don’t!”

She was sorry for her rudeness afterward, and that evening she was gay and young as she played ballads for her father and did her mother’s hair. After that, when she was going to bed, and very tired, and horribly confused in her thinking, she was sorry because she had been sorry because she had been rude.

The furnace went wrong, and its dissipations were discussed by Mr. Duke, Mrs. Duke, Mrs. Harry McPherson ne Duke, Lizzie, the furnace man, and the plumber, till Theo ran up to her room and bit the pillow to keep from screaming. She begged her father to install a new furnace: “The old one will set the house afire—it’s a terrible old animal. ”

“Nonsense. Take a chance on fire,” said he. “House and everything well insured anyway. If the house did burn down there’d be one good thing—wouldn’t have to worry any more about getting that twelve tons of coal we’re still shy. ”

When Mr. Duke was summoned to Duluth by the iron-mining company Mrs. Duke sobbingly called Theo home from the midst of tearing work.

Theo arrived in terror. “What is it? What’s happened to Papa?”

&#
8220;Happened? Why, nothing. But he didn’t have a chance to take a single thing to Duluth, and he simply won’t know what to do without his traveling bag—the one he got in London—all the fittings and everything that he’s used to, so he could put his hand on a toothbrush right in the dark—”

“But, Mother dear, I’m sure bathrooms in Duluth have electric lights, so he won’t need to put his hand on tooth-brushes in the dark. And he can get nice new lovely brushes at almost any drug store and not have to fuss—”

“Fuss? Fuss? It’s you who are doing the fussing. He just won’t know what to do without his traveling bag. ”

While she helped her mother and Lizzie drag the ponderous bag down from the attic; while her mother, merely thinking aloud, discussed whether “your father” would want the madras pajamas or the flannelette; while, upon almost tearful maternal request, Theo hunted all through the house for the missing cut-glass soap case, she was holding herself in. She disliked herself for being so unsympathetic. She remembered how touched she had been by exactly the same domestic comedy two years before. But unsympathetic she was, even two days later, when her mother triumphantly showed Mr. Duke’s note: “I can’t tell you how glad I was to see good old bag showing up here at hotel; felt lost without it. ”

“Just the same, my absence that afternoon cost the Red Cross at least fifty dollars, and for a lot less than that he could have gone out and bought twice as good a bag—lighter, more convenient. Things! Poor Dad is the servant of that cursed pig-iron bag,” she meditated.

She believed that she was being very subtle about her rebellion, but it must have been obvious, for after Mr. Duke’s return her mother suddenly attacked her at dinner.