ther 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 focus of her former ambition. Then she felt shame at her
unpreparedness. She caught the evening paper out of her husband's
lap to find the date. November ninth and not a Christmas thing
begun. Yet a few days and the news-stands would have apprised her
that Christmas was coming, for by the middle of November all the
magazines put on their holly and their chromos of the three Magi and
their Santa Clauses, as women put on summer straw hats at Easter.

Mrs. Budlong's hands sought and wrung each other as if in mutual
reproach. They had been pouring tea and passing wafers when they
should have been Dorcassing at their Christmas tasks. It had been
left for her husband of all people to warn her that her own special
Bacchanal was imminent.

If he had been a day later, the neighbors would have anticipated him
as well as the magazines. The Christmas idea seemed to strike the
whole town at once. Mrs. Budlong became the victim of her own
classic device of pretending to let slip a secret. The townswomen
shamelessly turned her own formula against her.

Mrs. Detwiller met her at church and said:

"Yesterday morning at eleven I had the most curious presentiment, my
dear. I remember the hour so exactly because I've been making it a
rule to begin work on your Christmas present every morning at-- Oh,
but I didn't inTend to let you know. No, dearie, I won't tell you
what it is. But I can't help believing it's Just what you'll need in
New York."

Myra Eppley, with whom Mrs. Budlong had never exchanged Christmas
presents, at all, but with whom an intimacy had sprung up since Mrs.
Budlong came into the reputation of her money--Myra Eppley had the
effrontery to call up on the telephone and say:

"Would you mind telling me, my dear, the shade of wall paper you're
going to have in your New York parlor, because I'm making you the
daintiest little--well, no matter, but will you tell me?"

Poo