Mrs. Budlongs Christmas Presents | Page 8

she decided to give a large dinner to wipe off a great number at once. But now when she calculated that the olives, the turkey, the Malaga grapes, the English walnuts, the salted almonds and a man from the hotel to wait on table, would total up twenty-five dollars or so, she found herself figuring how much twenty-five dollars would amount to in twenty-five years at compound interest.
She grew frantic to be quit of Carthage--to rub it off her visiting list. Unconsciously her motto became Cato's ruthless Carthago delenda est.
But she could neither delete Carthage from her map, nor free her feet from its dust. Her husband's business required him yet awhile. Even to close it up took time. And he would not, and could not, borrow money on Aunt Ida's estate till he was sure that it was his.
But all the while the festival reveled on. People in Carthage to whom New York was an inaccessible Carcassone, were now planning to visit Mrs. Budlong there at the palatial home she had described. Some of them frankly told her they were coming to see her. Wealth took on a new discomfort.
Sally Swezey afflicted the telephone with gossip: "As Mrs. Talbot was saying only yes'day, my dear, so many folks have threatened to visit you in your home on Fifth Avenue that you'll have to hang hammocks in your front yard."
And now they had spoiled even her future for her. What pride could she take in having a gorgeous home on Fifth Avenue with all these Carthage people rocking on the front porch. Probably some warm evening when Mrs. Hotel Vanderbilt was driving by in her new barouche, it would be just like Roscoe Detwiller to turn in at the gate, flounce down on the top step and sit there with his vest unbuttoned, and his seersucker coat under his arm, while he mopped the inside of his hat with his handkerchief.
But that was the discomfort of the morrow. To-day had its own spawn. One morning she was called to the telephone by the merciless Sallie Swezey with a new infliction. There was something almost ghoulish in Mrs. Swezey's cackling glee as she sang out across the wire:
"We're all so glad, my dear, that the next meeting of the Progressive Euchre is to be at your house."
Mrs. Budlong's chin dropped. She had quite forgotten this. Sallie chortled on:
"And say, do you know what?"
"What?"
"Everybody says you're going to give solid gold prizes and that even your booby prize will be handsomer than the first prize was at Mrs. Detwiller's."
"Ha, ha!" laughed Mrs. Budlong in a tone that sounded just like the spelling.
Mrs. Budlong's wealth seemed to be accepted as a sort of municipal legacy. All Carthage assumed to own it in community, and to enjoy it with her. Her walls rang with the hilarity of her neighbors. But her laughter took on more and more the sound of icicles snapping from the eaves of a shed.
She became the logical candidate for all the chief offices in clubs and societies and circles. She suddenly found herself seven or eight presidents and at least eleven chairwomen. The richest woman in town heretofore was Mrs. Foster Herpers, wife of the pole and shaft manufacturer. He owned about half of the real estate in town, but his wife had to distill expenses out of him in pennies. With a profound sigh of relief she resigned all her honors in Mrs. Budlong's favor.
Being president chiefly meant lending one's house for meetings as well as one's china and tea and sandwiches, and being five dollars ahead of anybody else in every subscription. Mrs. Budlong was panic-stricken with her own success, for there is nothing harder to handle than a dam-break of prosperity.
Worse yet, Mr. Budlong was ceasing to be the meek thing of yore. Every day was the first of the month with him.
It was well on in November when he flung himself into a Morris chair one evening and groaned aloud:
"I don't believe Aunt Ida ever left any money. If she did I don't believe we'll ever get any of it. And if we do, I know we'll not have a sniff at it before January. One of the lawyers has been called abroad on another case. We've got to stay in Carthage, at least over Christmas."
"Christmas!" The word crackled and sputtered in Mrs. Budlong's brain like a fuse in the dark. The past month had been so packed with other excitements that she had forgotten the very word. Now it blew up and came down as if one of her own unstable Christmas trees had toppled over on her with all its ropes of tinsel, its lambent tapers, and its eggshell splendors.

V
THE BITER BIT
First, Mrs. Budlong felt amazement that she could have so ignored the very