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Updated: May 21, 2025
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. 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.
"It was most disloyal," said Mrs. Budlong. "And to think that after tearing me to pieces behind my back, you could come and call on me." It was a fine speech, but after she heard herself say it, Mrs. Budlong had a sinking feeling that if she herself had never called on anybody she had not criticized she would have stayed at home all her life. But Johnetta Ackerley took another line.
She threw herself on Mrs. Budlong's mercy, and if Mrs. Budlong boasted of anything more than another it was her mercy. "I have just been at the church," said Johnetta, "helping to decorate it for Christmas week, and I was hanging up a big motto 'Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men' and I think it ought to apply to women, too. I grovel in apology and I pray you to forgive me.
Through Johnetta Ackerley's memory dashed a hundred caustic comments she had made on Mrs. Budlong. She blushed and sighed, turned away and closed the door after her, like the last line of an elegy. A surge of triumph swept over Mrs. Budlong. Success at last. Then the door opened and Johnetta reappeared on the sill with a look of angelic contrition. "I hardly know what to say," she said.
She glared at the intruder and threw up her chin. Johnetta stared at her aghast. "Why, my dear! you aren't mad at me, are you?" Mrs. Budlong smiled bitterly, and said nothing. Johnetta shrilled: "Why, what have I done?" As a matter of fact, what had she done? All that Mrs. Budlong could think of was her husband's unused suggestion for a war with Sally Swezey.
As they were comfortably dabbing each other's tears from their cheeks and sniffing their own and laughing cosily after the rain, Johnetta giggled and sobbed at once: "The idea of your thinking I didn't just love you and me working my fingers to the bone making a Christmas present for you!" In the Civil War there were over two thousand battles and the details could not be reported in a lifetime.
Budlong went to the window to triumph over her victim's retreat in a panic of confusion. Instead, she heard a light patter of footsteps and Johnetta Ackerley hurried into the room. "Oh, my dear, are you ill? Pardon my coming right up, but the cook takes so long and I was so worried for fear you were but you aren't, are you?" Mrs. Budlong was at bay.
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