“And what a small world it is,” amended Mr. Bugbee. “Why, we were sitting right here in this room when that subject first came up and, lo and behold, only five short months afterward we meet again on the very same spot. Where do they get that stuff about a fellow so rarely running into an old friend in New York?”
“You’d better save that cheap wit of yours for somebody who’ll appreciate it,” said Mrs. Bugbee, but she smiled an indulgent wifely smile as she said it. “Yes, indeed, time does fly! And here winter is almost upon us.” She lifted her voice and trilled a quotation: “‘And what will poor robin do then, poor thing?’” Mrs. Bugbee loved to sing. She sang rather well, too. About once in so often she thought seriously of taking up grand opera. Something always happened, though. With the Bugbees something always did.
“Don’t you be worrying your head about him,” said Mr. Bugbee. “Being a wise old bird, the robin will be down in Georgia dragging those long stretchy worms out of the ground. I wish they’d put as good a grade of rubber into elastic garters as they do into those Southern worms. It’s what we’ll be doing ourselves, poor things, that gives me pause.”
“First thing anybody knows Thanksgiving will be here.” She went on as though she had not heard him. “And then right away I’ll have to begin thinking about Christmas. Oh dear!” She finished with a sigh.
“Damn Christmas!” Mr. Bugbee was fervent.
“Why, Clem Bugbee, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
So he altered it: “Well, then, damn the kind of Christmas they have in this vast and presumably intellectual city! Giving other people things they don’t want that cost more money than you can afford to spend, because they are going to give you things you don’t want that cost more than they can afford to spend. Every retail shop turned into a madhouse with the inmates all running wild. Handing out money on all sides to people who hate you because it’s not more and you hating them right back because you’re being held up this way. Everybody and everything going stark raving crazy on Christmas Eve. Nervous prostrations. Jams in the streets. Sordidness, greed, ostentation, foolish extravagance. Postmen and clerks and expressmen dying on their feet. Truck-drivers spilling the sort of language that’s still regarded as improper except when spoken on the stage. Then it becomes realism, but the truck-driver, not being artistic but just a poor overworked slob of a vulgarian, he’s maybe arrested for using obscenity.
“Christmas Day, and you go around with ‘Merry Christmas’ on your lips and murder in your heart. And drink egg-nogs made out of amateur whisky. And eat too much. And go to fool parties where you’re bored stiff. Then the bills piling in. And the worthless junk piling up around the flat. And everything. Do I seem bitter? I do? Well, I am!”
“It’s easy enough to talk—goodness knows every rational human being deplores the commercialism and the—the mercenaryism—”