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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 trains were stalled west of the Mississippi and there was three feet of snow on the level in Denver. "That reminds me " Only too well Mr. Cone knew what Mr. Budlong's remark portended. The hotel proprietor was having an interesting conversation with Mrs. Appel upon the relative merits of moth-preventatives, but he arose abruptly. Mr. Budlong squared away again.
Budlong's hairpins when her hair came down and she lost her hat. Mr. Budlong, too, never failed to lag behind and become separated from the rest of the party, so that he had to be hunted. He persisted in riding in moccasins and said that his insteps "ached him" so that he could not keep up.
Carthage was no longer quiet. It simmered to the boiling-over point. Once it had been Mrs. Budlong's pride to be the social leader of Carthage. She began to read New York society notes with expectancy, as one cons the Baedeker of a town one is approaching. She lay awake nights wondering what she should wear at Mrs. Stuyvesant Square's next party and at Mrs. Astor House's sociable.
Budlong's neighbors were expected to drop in and view the loot under the lamp. It looked like hospitality, but it felt like hostility. She passed her neighbors under the yoke and gloated over her guests, while seeming to overgloat her gifts. But she got the gifts. There was no question of that. By hook or by crook she saw to it that the bazaar under the piano lamp always groaned.
Budlong's phlegmatic body contained an adventurous spirit, and the delights of a bath in a beaver dam in the heart of a primeval forest appealed to her strongly. To Mr. Hicks, who sought her out purposely to tell her about it, she confided: "Hicks, underneath my worldly exterior I am a Child of Nature. I love the simple, the primitive.
"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.
The hammered brass era gave way to the opposite extreme of painted velvet. They say it is a difficult art; and it may well be. Mrs. Budlong's first landscape might as well have been painted on the side of her Scotch collie. Her most finished roses had something of the look of shaggy tarantulas that had fallen into a paint pot and emerged in a towering rage.
When the money was collected. And now it was Mrs. Budlong's telephone that rang and rang. It was she that was called up and called up. It was she that sagged along the wall and shifted from foot to foot, from elbow to elbow and ear to ear. After living in Carthage all her life she was suddenly, as it were, welcomed to the city as a distinguished visiting stranger.
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?"