rs. If a young girl came home from boarding school
with a classmate, the real hostess had hardly time to show her to the
spare room, and say, "This is the bathroom, round here; watch out for
the step. And if the water don't run just wait--" when the telephone
would go Brrrrr! And there would be Mrs. Budlong brandishing an
invitation to a dinner party.

When the supply of guests ran low she would visit the sick. If a
worn-out housewife slept late some morning to catch up, Mrs. Budlong
would hear of it and rush over with a broth or something. It is said
that old Miss Malkin got out of bed with an unfinished attack of
pneumonia, just to keep from eating any more of Mrs. Budlong's wine
jellies.

In Carthage one pays for the telephone by the year. The company lost
money on Mrs. Budlong's wire. As a telephoner she was simply
interminable. She would spend a weekend at the instrument while the
prisoner at the other extreme of the wire shifted from ear to ear,
sagged along the wall, postponed household duties, made signals of
distress to other members of the family, and generally cursed Mr.
Alexander Graham Bell for his ingenuity.

Three wall telephones were changed to table phones on Mrs. Budlong's
account, and Mrs. Talbot had hers put by the bed. She used to take
naps while Mrs. Budlong talked and she trained herself to murmur,
"Yes, dear," at intervals in her sleep.

By means like this Mrs. Budlong kept Carthage more or less under her
thumb. Carthage squirmed but it could not crawl out from under.

This is the story of how the thumb was removed for good and all. It
was Mrs. Budlong herself that removed it. Carthage could never have
pried it up.

And strange to say the thumb came off because it grew popular.

Hitherto Mrs. Budlong had never been truly popular. People were
merely afraid of her. She was a whipper-in, a social bush-beater,
driving the populace from cover like partridges. She would not let
the town rest. The merchants alone admired her, for she was the
cause of much buying of new shoes, new hats, new clothes, fine
groceries, olives, Malaga grapes, salted almonds, raisins, English
walnuts and other things that one eats only at parties. She was the
first woman in Carthage that ever gave a luncheon and called it
breakfast, as years before she had been the first hostess to give a
dinner at any time except in the middle of the day. Also, she was
the first person there to say, "Come to me" whe