On Christmas Mrs. U. S. G. Budlong took all the gifts she had gleaned, and piled them on and around the baby grand piano in the back parlor. There was a piano lamp there, one of those illuminated umbrellas—about as large and as useful as a date-palm tree.
Along about that time in the afternoon when the Christmas dinner becomes a matter of hopeless remorse, Mrs. 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.
One of the chief engines for keeping up the display was the display itself. Everybody who knew Mrs. Budlong—and not to know Mrs. Budlong was to argue oneself unknown—knew that he or she would be invited to this Christmas triumph. And being invited rather implied being represented in the tribute.
Hence ensued a curious rivalry in Carthage. People vied with each other in giving Mrs. Budlong presents; not that they loved Mrs. Budlong more, but that they loved comparisons less.
The rivalry had grown to ridiculous proportions. But of course Mrs. Budlong did not care how ridiculous it grew; for it could hardly have escaped her shrewd eyes how largely it advantaged her that people should give her presents in order to show other people that some people needn't think they could show off before other people without having other people show that they could show off, too, as well as other people could. The pyschology must be correct, for it is incoherent.
Mrs. Budlong herself was never known to break any of the commandments, but in her back parlor her neighbors made flitters of the one against coveting thy neighbor's and-so-forth and so-on.
It was when Mr. and Mrs. County Road Supervisor Detwiller were walking home from one of these occasions, that Mr. Detwiller was saying: "Well, ain't Mizzes Budlong the niftiest little gift-getter that ever held up a train? How on earth did We happen to get stung?"
"I don't know, Roscoe. It's one of those things you can't get out of without getting out of town too. Here we've been and gone and skimped our own children to buy something that would show up good in Mrs. Budlong's back parlor, and when I laid eyes on it in all that clutter—why, if it didn't look like something the cat brought in, I'll eat it!"
Mr. Detwiller had only one consolation—and he grinned over it: