Mrs. Budlongs Christmas Presents | Page 4

fifty pieces, each cup and saucer with a flower on it, the result looked so startlingly like something from a medical museum, that she never dared give the set away. She lent it to the cook to eat her meals on. The set went fast.
During this epoch Master Ulysses Budlong Jr. was studying at school a physiology ornamented with a few pictures in color representing the stomachs of alcohol specialists. They were intended, perhaps, to frighten little school children from frequenting saloons during recess, or to warn them not to put whisky on their porridge.
It was at this time that Mrs. Budlong spent two weeks' hard labor painting Easter lilies on an umbrella jug. When it came home from the furnace, her husband stared at it and mumbled:
"It's artistic, but what is it?"
Little Ulysses shrieked: "Oh, I know!" and darting away, returned with his physiology opened at one of those gastric sunsets, and--well, it was this that impelled Mrs. Budlong to a solemn pledge never to paint china again--a pledge she has nobly kept.
From smeared china she went to that art in which a woman buys something at a store, pulls out half of it, and calls the remnant drawn work. A season of this was succeeded by a mania for sofa cushions. It fairly snowed sofa cushions all over Carthage that Christmas; and Yale, Harvard and Princeton pillows could be found in homes that had never known even a night school alumnus.
There ensued a sober period of burnt wood and a period of burnt leather, during which excited neighbors with a keen sense of smell called the fire department three times and the board of health once. And now Indian heads broke out all over town and the walls looked as if a shoemaker's apron had been chosen for the national pennant.
There were various other spasms of manufacture, each of them fashionable at its time and foolish at anytime. As Mr. Detwiller said:
"Somebody ought to write a history of Mrs. Budlong's Christmas presents. It would tell the complete story of all the darned fool fads that American women have been up to for twenty years."
But foolish soever, Mrs. Budlong was fair. A keen sense of sportsmanship led her to give full notice to such people as she planned to honor with her gifts. She knew how embarrassing it is to receive presents from one to whom no present has been sent, and she made it a point of honor somehow to forewarn her prospective beneficiaries betimes. Her favorite method was the classic device of pretending to let slip a secret. For instance:
"Yesterday morning, my dear, I had the Strangest exPerience. It was just ten o'clock. I remember the hour so exactly because for the last few days I have made it a rule to begin work on your Christmas present just at ten--Oh, but I didn't mean to tell you. It was to be a surprise. No, don't ask me, I won't give you an inkling, but I really think it will please you. It's something you've been needing for Such a long time."
And she left the victim to writhe from then on to Christmas, trying alternately to imagine what gift was impending and what would be an appropriate counter-gift.

III
MISTRESS OF THE REVELS
In more ways than one Mrs. Budlong kept Carthage on the writhe. Christmas was merely the climax of a ceaseless activity. All the year round she was at work like a yeast alert in a soggy dough.
She was forever getting up things. She was one of those terrible women who return calls on time or a little ahead. That made it necessary for you to return hers earlier. If you didn't, she called you up on the telephone and asked you why you hadn't. You had to promise to come over at once or she'd talk to you till your ear was welded to the telephone. Then if you broke your promise she called you up about that. She got in from fifty-two to a hundred and four calls a year, where one or two would have amply sufficed for all she had to say.
It was due to her that Carthage had such a lively social existence--for its size. Once, when she fell ill, the people felt suddenly as passengers feel when a street car is suddenly braked back on its haunches. All Carthage found itself wavering and poised on tiptoe and clinging to straps; and then it sogged back on its heels and waited till the car should resume progress. Mrs. Budlong was the town's motorman--or "motorneer," as they say in Carthage.
Before she was out of bed, she had invitations abroad for a convalescent tea, and everybody said, "Here we go again!"
If strangers visited Carthage, Mrs. Budlong counted them her clients the moment they arrived. Of