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Updated: May 4, 2025
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.
And the Budlongs began to think that tombstones were in bad form if ostentatious. Heirs have notoriously simple tastes in monuments. They had always accounted Aunt Ida a hard-fisted miser before, but now she began to look like a slippery-palmed spendthrift. They began almost to suspect the probity of the poor old maid.
And the Budlongs were enduring the illness without entertaining the microbe. 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.
Budlong would be permitted to take care of it while his wife got rid of it. One of those relatives, very common in fiction, and not altogether unknown in real life, finally let go of her money at the behest of her impatient undertaker. 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.
The town clock was striking midnight as the Budlongs dragged themselves home. There was much yet to be done. Parcels must be opened, price tags removed, gifts done up in pink tissue paper and gold twine, cards must be inscribed and inserted and the parcels rewrapped and addressed. The Strouther and Streckfuss driver had been hired at an exorbitant cost to sit up and deliver the gifts.
She could only think of the morrow when all of these donors found that reciprocity had gone down to defeat. The Budlongs avoided each other's eyes. They were thinking the same thing. The strain endured till it tested their metal to the breaking point. When three enormous packages were brought to the door by the Detwillers' hired man, Mrs. Budlong broke out hysterically: "I just can't stand it."
Worse yet, they feared that a later will might turn up bequeathing all her money to some abominable charity or other. She had been addicted to occasional subscriptions during her lifetime. The Budlongs themselves were beginning, even at this distance from their money-to-be, to suffer its infection, its inevitable reaction on the character.
When the Budlongs made their irruption, they were not received cordially. Word had gone abroad that the Budlongs were buying all their Christmas presents out of town. They must be, for they bought none in. This treachery to home industry was bitterly resented. Then Budlong galvanized everybody with a cry like a flash of lightning: "I want to buy nearly everything in the shop. Get busy."
"Hell!" roared Mr. Budlong. "Get on your hat and coat. We'll go down and buy everything that's left in town." Holiday bargains in Carthage were not brilliant. After being pawed over for several weeks, they were depressing indeed. When the Budlongs strode into Strouther and Streckfuss's, it was nearly ten o'clock at night.
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