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.