Chapter 3

"What on earth is the matter!" the startled mother gasped. "Come here to me, you poor child---and be careful not to bleed on the new rug."

Ulysses' articulation was impeded with sobs and the oscillations of three semi-detached teeth, that waved in the breeze as he screamed: "Little Clarence Detwiller LICKED me! so he did! and I on'y p-pushed him off his sled into a puddle of ice wa-wa-water and he attackted me and kicked my f-f-Face-ace off."

Mr. and Mrs. Budlong were so elated with the same idea that they forgot to console their heart-broken offspring with more than Mr. Budlong's curt, "First teeth anyway; saves you a trip to the dentist." He nodded to his wife.

"Just the excuse we were looking for."

"Sent direct from heaven," nodded Mrs. Budlong. "You call up Roscoe Detwiller this minute and tell him his son has criminal tendencies and ought to be in jail and will undoubtedly die on the gallows. Then he won't speak to you to-morrow."

"You bet he won't. He'll just quietly do to me what his boy did to Ulie. No, my dear, you tell all that to Mrs. Detwiller yourself."

Mrs. Budlong tossed her head with fine contempt. "What cowards men are! always shielding themselves behind women's skirts. Well, if you're afraid, I'm not. I'll give her the biggest talking to she ever had in her born days."

She rose with fortitude and started to the telephone, sneered at it and glared at it. Her husband stood by her to support her in the hour of need. He watched her ask for the number, and snap ferociously at the central. Then she fell panicky again and held the transmitter to him appealingly. He waved her away scornfully.

She set her teeth hard and there was grimness in her eye and tone as she said: "Is this you, Mrs. Detwiller! ---- Oh, yes, thank you, I'm very well. I wanted to tell you-m ---- oh, yes, he's well, too. But what I started to say was ---- Yes, so Ulie says! ------ Yes, right in the face ------ Oh, of course, ------ Naturally ------ Boys will be ------ ------ Oh, I'm sorry you punished him. He's such a sweet child ------ ------ Oh, don't think of it. I'm sure it was all Ulie's fault. It will teach him better next time. He's so rough! ------ ------ Oh, really, how awfully sweet of you. Good night, dear."

She stuck the receiver on the hook and looked for a hook to hang herself on. Her eyes were shifty with shame as she mumbled:

"I couldn't get a word in edgeways. She apologized."

"She apologized!" Mr. Budlong roared. "Why, you ate out of her hand. And you were going to show me what a coward I-- Butter wouldn't have melted--say, why didn't you kiss her?"

Mrs. Budlong was suffering a greater dismay than remorse. "What d'you suppose that cat of a Clara Detwiller's going to do?" she moaned. "She's going to make her boy send Ulie a nice Christmas present! And now we'll have to buy one for Ulie to give to him!"

"Well, of all the--oh, you're a great manager, you are! You call up a woman to get rid of giving one Christmas present, and now you've got to give two. Here! where you going?"

"I'm going to that phone and tell Mrs. Detwiller what I think of her."

"You keep away from that phone. Before you could ring off again her husband would have a Christmas present wished onto ME!"

VIII

FOILED AGAIN

The next morning Mrs. Budlong arose from dreams of finding bargains after all. She felt a spirit in her feet that led her, who knows how, to the Christmas-window street. But the crowds and the prices and the servility of the salesfolk drove her out again.

On her laggard way home she saw Sally Swezey, lean and lanky and somehow reminding her of a flamingo. Sally espied her from afar and stepped a little higher. Mrs. Budlong remembered her husband's suggestion. She made a quick resolution to do or die. Her cheek was cold and white and her heart beat loud and fast, but she tried to set her double chin into a square jaw, and she passed Sally Swezey as if Sally Swezey were a lamp-post by the curb--a common lamp-post by the curb, and nothing more.

She heard Sally's gush of greeting stop short as if someone had turned a faucet in her throat; she heard a gulp; then she heard a strangled silence. Then she heard Sally call her name tentatively, tenderly, reproachfully. Then she heard no more. And she knew no more till her feet somehow carried her home. But she had hardly time to flop into a rocker and utter a prayer of gratitude and pride for having been vouchsafed the courage to snub a Carthaginian before Br-r-rr!--the relentless telephone was on her trail. She knew just who it was and she braced herself to meet one of Sally's sharp-tongued assaults. But Sally said--in part:

"Oh, you poor darling dear, is that you? and how are you now? I was So alarmed for you. You looked So ill and worn and--aren't the Christmas crowds awful this year? and nothing fit to buy and such prices! and--you must be just worn out. You really must spare yourself, for do you Know what you Did, dearest. You went right By me without Seeing me, or Answering me! Yes, you did! I was so startled that I didn't have brains enough to run after you and assist you home. I'm so glad you got there alive and I Do hope you're feeling better and I'm so aShamed of myself for letting you go all that way aLone in that pitiful conDition. Can you ever forGive me?"

When Mr. Budlong came home for luncheon, Mrs. Budlong told him the whole story. He glared at her with an I-give-you-up expression and growled:

"And when she said all that, what did you say?"

"I don't know." Mrs. Budlong faltered. "All I know is that she's coming over this afternoon with a lot of that wine jelly I gave her the receipt for."

"And what do you intend to do this time?" Mr. Budlong demanded. The skeptic in his tone stung her to revolt. She could usually be strong in the presence of her husband. She looked at least like Mrs. Boadicea as she said:

"I intend to tell Sally Swezey what you told me to. And I will accept no apologies, none whatever."

When Mr. Budlong came home to dinner she avoided his gaze. She confessed that she had changed her program. She hadn't the heart to insult poor Sally, and she had admitted that she was a hit dizzy and qualmish and she had--well, she--she--

Mr. Budlong finished for her fiercely:

"I know! You ate a lot of her wine jelly, and you told her she was a love and you kissed her good-by, and would she excuse you from coming to the door because you were still a little wobbly."

Mrs. Budlong looked at him in surprise: "She told you!"

"Nah! I haven't seen her."

"Then how on earth did you ever guess?" she babbled.

"It was my womanly intuition!" he snarled, and that evening he went down town and sat in the hotel lobby for a couple of hours. He usually did this anyway--in summer he sat on the sidewalk--but this evening, he did it with a certain implication of escape. He expressed renunciation in the mere shutting of the door.

On the way home Mr. Budlong was busy with schemes. His mind turned again to his son.

In a smallish town, a growing boy is an unfailing source of _casus belli_.

As an inciter of feuds there was something almost Balkan or Moroccan about Ulysses Budlong Junior. Nearly every day he had come charging into the house with bad news in some form or other. Some rock or snowball he had cast with the most innocent of intentions had gone through a window or a milk wagon or somebody's silk hat. Or he had pulled a small girl's hair, or taken the skates away from a helpless urchin. He had bad luck too in picking victims with belligerent big brothers.

Mr. Budlong recognized these desperado traits and he fully expected Ulysses Junior to make him the father of a convict. Suddenly now despair became hope. Let Mrs. Budlong capitalize her spats; he would promote Ulie's. The affair Detwiller had turned out badly, but Mr. Budlong would not yield to one defeat. He watched eagerly for the next misdemeanor of his young hopeless. He relied on him to embroil, as it were, all Europe in an international conflict.

But the dove of peace seemed to have alighted on Ulysses' shoulder. He even began to go to Sunday School--the Methodist this year because they had given the largest cornucopias in town the Christmas before. And he talked nothing but Golden Texts till Mr. Budlong began to fear that he would one day be the father of a parson.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Budlong grew bellicose again. She snubbed people right and left, but they generously imputed it to absent-mindedness. She failed to go to the dinner party the Teeples gave in her honor, and she sent no excuse. This was the unpardonable sin in Carthage and the Budlong chairs sat vacant through the dinner.

But Mrs. Teeple graciously assumed that she was ill and sent over the cut flowers off the table. And she hoped the poor dear would feel better soon.

A few days later Mrs. Budlong's pet Maltese kitten was done to nine deaths at once by the Disney's fox terrier. Mrs. Budlong mourned the kitten, but there was consolation in the thought that she could now cut the Disneys off her list.

Before she could get the kitten decently interred in the back yard, Mrs. Disney was at the front door. She flung her arms round Mrs. 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.

IX

WORSE, AND MORE OF IT

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. When the cook arrived upstairs like a grand piano moving in, Mrs. Budlong said in an icy tone:

"Not at home."

"But I told her you was. And she seen you at the windy."

"Not!--at!--home!"

"But I'm after telling her--"

Mrs. Budlong could be as stern as steel with her husband or her servants. She cowed Brigida into lumbering downstairs with the message. Mrs. 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. 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. She spoke through locked teeth:

"It's not what you've done but what you've said."

"Why, what have I said?"

"You know well enough what you've been saying behind my back, and you needn't think that people don't come and tell me. I name no names, but I know! Oh, I know!"

Now, of course, everybody says things behind everybody else's back that nobody would care to have repeated to anybody. 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. "Of course, I must admit I did rather forget myself. It was at the last meeting of the Progressive Euchre Club and everybody was criticizing you for having solid gold prizes when they were at your house. They said it was vulgar ostentation. I didn't say anything for the longest time, but finally when they all said your money had gone to your head, hadn't it, I admit I did mumble, 'It seems so.' But it is only what everybody else says all the time, and I assure you I didn't really mean it. Of course nobody can behave just the same after they are a millionaire as they did before. But I am awfully fond of you and--and--"

"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. You can't refuse your forgiveness when I implore it, can you?"

Mrs. Budlong wanted to but could not and the two women fell about each other's throats and exchanged moan for moan. 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!"

X

A WELL-LAID PLAN

In the Civil War there were over two thousand battles and the details could not be reported in a lifetime. But their result can be stated in a phrase. The same brevity must apply to the campaigns, the stratagems, ballistics and tactics of Mrs. Budlong: numberless efforts at secession ended as a lost cause.

There was one more desperate struggle. While only a few days stood between her and her famous Christmas afternoons, she and her dour husband were having a bitter council of war. She had another attack of inspiration.

"I have it! the very thing! Why haven't we thought of it before? Quarantine!"

"Quarantine?" echoed Mr. Budlong as if the word were gibberish.

"Yes. If we had something contagious in the house and a quarantine on, people couldn't come here with their odious gifts and they would be so afraid to get ours that they'd be much obliged to us for not sending them any."

For the first time in years Mr. Budlong paid Mrs. Budlong a sincere homage:

"You're a genius. It takes a woman to squirm out of a difficulty after all."

He was so excited he actually kissed her--and he hadn't finished his evening paper at that!

This overjoyed her so far that she fairly glowed.

"Oh, I'm so glad you approve, Ulie dear. And you'll help me, won't you?"

"You bet I will, ducky dove."

"That's glorious. Now which will you pretend to have, yellow fever or smallpox or--"

"Which will _I_ pretend to have? Do you mean to say that you expect ME to go bed with a fatal disease?"

"It doesn't have to be fatal, my love. Just so long as it's contagious, you know."

"Well, of all th--what's to happen to my business?"

"Why, you can call it a vacation. And you can pretend to get well after Christmas; or you can have the doctor say it wasn't yellow fever after all."

"But I stay in bed for several days, eh?"

"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. You can have yellow fever, or scarlet, or green or any color you like--robin's egg blue fever for all I care."

"But, my darling, I can't be having those things! You know I don't believe in them this year, since I became a--oh, it wouldn't do at all for Me. But You could have it because You believe in diseases."

"You bet I do, and I believe you've got softening of the brain." He paced the floor in an effort to keep up with his temper. Eventually he stopped short. He remembered that his son had failed to help the family out in its distress. He said:

"Let Ulie have something."

XI

GANG AGLEY AGAIN

Mrs. Budlong felt a certain superstitious uneasiness, but was finally won over, and Ulie was unanimously elected the scapegoat--or in more modern form, the goat.

Ulie was in bed at the time sleeping like an innocent cherub and smiling in his sleep. He was dreaming of a great invention: he would set a figure-4 trap near his fireplace and snare Santa Claus by the foot. Then from a safe ambush under the bed, he would assail the old gentleman with his nigger-shooter till he laid him low, whereupon he could rifle the entire pack at his leisure, and select what he wanted. Ulie had not been attending Sabbath School in vain. The lesson of the week concerned David and Goliath.

Prom such dreams as these Ulie woke the next morning to be told that he need not leave his bed. He had scarlet fever and must keep close under his cover.

"Scarlet nothin'!" was Ulie's reply. "I gotter go to a meetin' of the Youth's Helpin' Hand Socirety this afternoon and I'll be darned if I stay in any dog-on bed."

Mr. Budlong finally persuaded him--Ulie wasn't dressed yet and it hurts worse on the bare hide. Then Mr. Budlong hurried down town to bribe a doctor and borrow a red placard of the board of health. He was just rounding the corner on the way home when he caught sight of Ulie descending from the window by means of a knotted sheet. Ulie had only a nightgown on, and owing to the heavy wind it wasn't much on.

He dropped to the ground before Mr. Budlong could reach him, then darted away across lots barefooted through the snow towards the Detwillers'. Mr. Budlong treed him just before he reached the neighbors. But the boy would not come down till his father promised immunity both from punishment and from scarlet fever.

The Detwillers were arriving on the run, so the father promised, hid the scarlet fever propaganda in his inside pocket, wrapped Ulie in his own overcoat and carried him home. There was so much dread of pneumonia that the guilty parents could not include Ulie in any more schemes. And they could think of no schemes. The day before the Day Before Christmas found them in a panic. The Day Before found them grimly resolved to stand siege.

On the blessed Eve they sat before their cheerless fire-front and stared at the packages that had been pouring in all day long. The old postman had staggered under the final load and hinted so broadly for a Christmas present that he got one--the first breach in their solemn resolve.

They had excepted Ulie, of course, from the embargo. But they had been in such a flurry that they had postponed him till they forgot him entirely. The doorbell was rung so incessantly throughout the evening that the cook sat on the hall stairs to be handy. She piled the packages up on the piano till they spilled off. The piano lamp was gradually sinking beneath the encroaching tide. Presents were brought in wagons, carriages, buggies, carts, by coachmen, gardeners, cooks, maids, messenger boys, and children of all ages and dimensions.

On any other occasion Mrs. Budlong would have been running here and there, peeking into parcels and restraining her curiosity till the next day out of sheer joy in curiosity. Now she opened never a bundle. 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."

"Hell!" roared Mr. Budlong. "Get on your hat and coat. We'll go down and buy everything that's left in town."

XII

AN AMAZING CHRISTMAS

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. The sales-wretches, mostly pathetic spinsters of both sexes, were gaunt and jaded. They yawned incessantly and held on to the counters.

Even Messrs. Strouther and Streckfuss had the nap worn off their plushy sleekness. They were surveying the wreckage, and dolefully realizing that some of the Christmas bills would not be paid by the Fourth of July.

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."

It was too late to select. Mr. and Mrs. Budlong with their lengthy list in hand sprinted up one aisle and down another, pointing, prodding, rarely pausing to say "How much?" but monotonously chanting: "Gimme this! Gimme that! Gimme two of these! Gimme six of them! Gimme that! Gimme this! Gimme them!"

They bought glaring garden jars and ghastly vases, scarf pins that would disturb the peace, silly bisque figurines for mantels and what-nots, combs and brushes that would raise the hair on end instead of allaying it, oxidized silverized lead pencils, button hooks, tooth brushes, nail files, cuticle knives, pin cushions, ink stands, paper weights, picture frames, bits of lace and intimate white things with ribbons in them--Mr. Budlong turned away while she priced these.

Strouther and Streckfuss were in a panic of joy at the situation. They managed in the excitement to work off a number of old horrors that had been refused for years and years--ancient, dust-stained landmarks on the shelves. Mr. Strouther showed the things, Mr. Streckfuss wrote the list of purchases,--he made many mistakes in prices, but strangely never to his own damage; and the entire staff of assistants followed, taking down, and wrapping up, and rushing parcels to the door, where they were bundled onto a wagon.

Mr. Budlong should have been a medieval general. He pillaged that store with the thoroughness of the Crusaders looting Constantinople.

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. The horses had not been consulted. They leaned on each other and slept, dreaming of oats.

The Budlong parlor was soon a hideous scene. The husband would open a bundle and sing out, "Who's this big immense pink and purple cuspidor for?"

"That's a jardineer," Mrs. Budlong would gasp. "It's a return for that horrible cat those hateful Disneys are going to inflict on me. Here's the card."

She handed him a holly-wreathed pasteboard on which she had written, "For Mr. and Mrs. Disney with most affectionate Yuletide greetings."

She indited cards as fast as she could think up phrases. She sought for variety, but the effort was maddening. She wrote, "Very merry Christmas," "The merriest of Xmases," "A merry merry Yuletide," "A Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year," "Christmas Greetings," "Xmas Greetings," "Yuletide Greetings," "Wishing you a--" "With loving wishes for--" "Affectionate," and so on and so on and on and on. She scribbled and scrawled till slumber drugged her and her pen went crazy. When she fell asleep she was writing "A Yuly Newmas and a Happy X-Year to Swally Sezey."