ve
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. The pyschology must be correct, for it is
incoherent.

Mrs. Budlong herself was never known to break any of the
commandments, but in her back parlor her neighbors made flitters of
the one against coveting thy neighbor's and-so-forth and so-on.

It was when Mr. and Mrs. County Road Supervisor Detwiller were
walking home from one of these occasions, that Mr. Detwiller was
saying: "Well, ain't Mizzes Budlong the niftiest little gift-getter
that ever held up a train? How on earth did We happen to get stung?"

"I don't know, Roscoe. It's one of those things you can't get out of
without getting out of town too. Here we've been and gone and
skimped our own children to buy something that would show up good in
Mrs. Budlong's back parlor, and when I laid eyes on it in all that
clutter--why, if it didn't look like something the cat brought in,
I'll eat it!"

Mr. Detwiller had only one consolation--and he grinned over it:

"Well, there's no use cryin' over spilt gifts. But did you see how
she stuck old Widower Clute for that Japanese porcelain vace--I
notice she called it vahs?"

"Porcelain?" sniffed Mrs. Detwiller. "Paper musshay!"

"Well, getting even a paper--what you said--from old Clute is equal
to extracting solid gold from anybody else. 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. But o'
course she couldn't afford to buy those kind of things for herself
now when she's got to remember all her dear friends, and she runs on
and on and the old batch growls, 'Stung again!' and goes to Strouther
and Streckfuss's and tells Mr. Streckfuss to send Mrs. Budlong that
blamed bronze clock she was admiring. And that's how she g