Rupert Hughes

“ You simply telephone Sally Swezey that a certain person told you—and you won't name any names—that she had been making fun of you and you'd be much obliged if she never spoke to you again for you'd certainly never speak to her again."
"But how do I know Sally Swezey has been making fun of me?"
"Oh, there ain't any doubt but what everybody in town is doing that."
"Ulysses Budlong! how can you talk so!"
"If people without money couldn't make fun of people with—what consolation would they have? Anyway, it's not me but the other folks you're supposed to quarrel with. ”

“ Mrs. Budlong was suffering a greater dismay than remorse. "What d'you suppose that cat of a Clara Detwiller's going to do?" she moaned. "She's going to make her boy send Ulie a nice Christmas present! And now we'll have to buy one for Ulie to give to him!"
"Well, of all the—oh, you're a great manager, you are! You call up a woman to get rid of giving one Christmas present, and now you've got to give two. Here! where you going?" ”

“ The Budlongs had the pleasure of seeing the glorious news of their good fortune in big headlines in the Carthage papers.
It was the only display Mr. Budlong ever received in that paper without paying for it—excepting the time when he ran for Mayor on the opposition ticket and was referred to in letters an inch high as "Candidate Nipped-in-the-Budlong."
But now the cornucopia of plenty had burst wide open on the front porch. It seemed as if they would have to wade through gold dollars to get to their front gate—when the money was collected. When the money was collected. ”

“ Those who live beyond their means joyously when their means are small, become small themselves, when their means get beyond living beyond. The Budlongs began to figure percentages on sums left in the bank or put out on mortgages. They began to think money; and money is money, large or small. Mrs. Budlong began to feel that she had been unjust to Aunt Ida. ”

“ Old-fashioned Christmas was like old-fashioned circuses—mostly meant for the young ones. Nowadays circuses have growed so big and so improper that nobody would dast take a child to one, or if you do, they get crazy notions. ”

“ Budlong did not care how ridiculous it grew; for it could hardly have escaped her shrewd eyes how largely it advantaged her that people should give her presents in order to show other people that some people needn't think they could show off before other people without having other people show that they could show off, too, as well as other people could. ”

“ Christmas morning in the town of Carthage is a day when most of the people keep close at home, for Christmas is another passover. It is Santa Claus that passes over.
People in Carthage are not rich; the shops are not grandiose, and inter-family presents are apt to be trivial and futile—or worse yet, utile.
The Carthaginian mother generally finds that Father has credited the hat she got last fall, to this Christmas; the elder brothers receive warm under-things and the young ones brass-toed boots, mitts and mufflers. ”

“ Now's your chance to capitalize your spats."
"Men are such im-boo-hoo-ciles!" was Mrs. Budlong's comment, as she began to weep. Her husband patted her with a timid awkwardness as if she were the nose of a strange horse. "There! there! we'll fix this up fine. What did you quarrel with Mrs. Alsop about?"
"She told Sally Swezey and Sally Swezey told me—that I used my
Carthage presents to send to relatives in other towns."
"She flattered you at that," said Mr. Budlong unconsolingly. "But don't you dream of forgiving her till after Christmas." ”

“ People who had been in the habit of devoting a day or two to cleaning up a year's social debts and went up and down the streets dropping doleful calls like wreaths on headstones, walked in unannounced of mornings. ”

“ Budlong. "You call up Roscoe Detwiller this minute and tell him his son has criminal tendencies and ought to be in jail and will undoubtedly die on the gallows. Then he won't speak to you to-morrow."
"You bet he won't. He'll just quietly do to me what his boy did to
Ulie. No, my dear, you tell all that to Mrs. Detwiller yourself."
Mrs. Budlong tossed her head with fine contempt. "What cowards men are! always shielding themselves behind women's skirts. ”

“ Budlong's Christmas presents were of two sorts: those she made herself and those she made her husband pay for. He was the typical husband who never fails to settle his wife's bills, so long as he may raise a row about them till his wife cries and looks like an expensive luxury which only a really successful man could afford. ”

“ Budlong thundered. "It has become a public menace. It's worse than Wall Street. Wall Street is supposed have started as the thermometer of the country's business and now it's gone and got so goldum big that the thermometer is makin' the weather. When Wall Street feels muggy it's got to rain and the sun don't dare shine without takin' a peek at the thermometer first off.
"Christmas ain't any longer an opportunity to show good will to your neighbors. It's a time when you got to show off before your neighbors. You women make yourselves and us men sick the way you carry on all through December. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is almost as much trouble to inherit money nowadays as to earn it in the first place. Mr. Budlong was confronted with such a list of post-mortem debts that must be postpaid for his deceased Aunt Ida that he almost begrudged her her bit of very real estate in Woodlawn. ”

“ This was the unpardonable sin in Carthage and the Budlong chairs sat vacant through the dinner.
But Mrs. Teeple graciously assumed that she was ill and sent over the cut flowers off the table. And she hoped the poor dear would feel better soon.
A few days later Mrs. Budlong's pet Maltese kitten was done to nine deaths at once by the Disney's fox terrier. Mrs. Budlong mourned the kitten, but there was consolation in the thought that she could now cut the Disneys off her list. ”

“ Nearly everybody in Carthage—except Mrs. Ulysses S. G. Budlong—celebrates Christmas behind closed doors. People find it easier to rhapsodize when the collateral is not shown. It is amazing how far a Carthaginian can go on the most meager donation. The formula is usually: "We had Such a lovely Christmas at our house. ”

“ And you can pretend to get well after Christmas; or you can have the doctor say it wasn't yellow fever after all."
"But I stay in bed for several days, eh?"
"Oh, you can move round all you want, just so 's't you don't go outdoors, and keep away from the windows."
Mr. Budlong's admiration was reverting to its normal state. He growled:
"You women would be an awful joke, if you were only a little funnier.
If you're so keen on this quarantine business you quarantine yourself. ”

“ He's the stingiest man in sev'n states. He don't care any more for a two dollar bill than he does for his right eye. I bet she gave him ether before he let go."
"Oh, she works all the old bachelors and widowers that way," said Mrs. Detwiller, with a mixture of contempt and awe. "Invites 'em to a dinner party or two around Christmas marketing time, and begins to talk about how pretty the shops are and how tempting everything she wants is; says she saw a nimitation bronze clock at Strouther and Streckfuss's that it almost broke her heart to leave there. ”

“ Budlong called Mr. Budlong's "den." This was the place where she kept the furniture that she didn't dare keep in the parlor.
People who had never come to see her in spite of her prehensile telephone, dropped in to pay up some musty old call that had lain unreturned for years. People who had always come formally, even funereally, rushed in as informally and with as devouring an enthusiasm as old chums. People who used to run in informally now drove up in vehicles from MacMulkin's livery stable ”

“ Disney was at the front door. She flung her arms round Mrs. Budlong and wept, declaring that she had resolved to give the murderous terrier away to a farmer, and had already sent to Chicago for a pedigreed Angora to replace the Maltese. It would arrive the day before Christmas.
IX WORSE, AND MORE OF IT As if that were not enough for one day, in the afternoon Johnetta Ackerley called. She saw Mrs. Budlong at an upper window and waved to her as she came along the walk. When the cook arrived upstairs like a grand piano moving in, Mrs. Budlong said in an icy tone:
"Not at home." ”

“ VII FOILED Ulysses S. G. Budlong was a man fertile in ideas and unflinching in their execution. Otherwise he would never have attained his present unquestioned supremacy, as the leading hay and feed merchant in Carthage.
"It's as easy as falling off a log," he urged. "You women are always spatting about something. ”

“ The girls may find something ornamental in their stockings, and their stockings may be silk or nearly—but then girls have to be foolishly diked up anyway, or they will never be married out. Dressing up daughters comes under the head of window-display or coupons, and is charged off to publicity. ”

“ Budlong's well-meant attentions. It was sometimes embarrassing when relatives appeared—for everybody has Concealed Relatives that he is perfectly willing to leave in concealment.
Mrs. Alex. (pronounced Ellick) Stubblebine never forgave Mrs. Budlong for dragging into the limelight some obscure cousins of her husband's who had drifted into Carthage to borrow money on their farm. Mrs. Stubblebine was always bragging about her people, her own people that is. Her husband's people, of course, were after all only Stubblebines, while her maiden name was Dilatush ”

“ VI DESPAIR AND AN IDEA Days and days went by in a stupor of dull hopelessness. Thanksgiving came and the Budlong turkey might as well have been a crow. In desperation she decided to make a tentative exploration of the shops now burgeoning with Christmas splendor; every window a spasm of gewgaws. Since she had no time to make, she must buy.
The length of her list sent her to the cheaper counters, but she was not permitted to browse among them. At Strouther and Streckfuss's, Mr. ”

“ 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. ”

“ MRS. BUDLONG'S CHRISTMAS PRESENTS BY RUPERT HUGHES AUTHOR OF "EXCUSE ME," "THE OLD NEST," ETC. MCMXII CONTENTS CHAPTER I AT THE SIGN OF THE PIANO LAMP II CHRONICLES OF A CRAFTSMAN III MISTRESS OF THE REVELS IV ONLY A MILLIONAIRE V THE BITER BIT VI DESPAIR AND AN IDEA VII FOILED VIII FOILED AGAIN IX WORSE, AND MORE OF IT X A WELL LAID PLAN XI GANG AGLEY AGAIN XII AN AMAZING CHRISTMAS MRS. BUDLONG'S CHRISTMAS PRESENTS I AT THE SIGN OF THE PIANO LAMP The morning after Christmas Eve is the worst morning-after there is.
The very house suffers the headache that follows a prolonged spree. ”