“Christmas has quit being a sign of people’s affections,” Mr. Budlong thundered.  “It has become a public menace.  It’s worse than Wall Street.  Wall Street is supposed have started as the thermometer of the country’s business and now it’s gone and got so goldum big that the thermometer is makin’ the weather.  When Wall Street feels muggy it’s got to rain and the sun don’t dare shine without takin’ a peek at the thermometer first off.

“Christmas ain’t any longer an opportunity to show good will to your neighbors.  It’s a time when you got to show off before your neighbors.  You women make yourselves and us men sick the way you carry on all through December.  And the children!—­they’re worse’n the grown-ups.

“Old-fashioned Christmas was like old-fashioned circuses—­mostly meant for the young ones.  Nowadays circuses have growed so big and so improper that nobody would dast take a child to one, or if you do, they get crazy notions.

“When I was a boy, if I got a drum and a tin horn I was so happy I couldn’t keep quiet.  But last Christmas little Ulie Junior cried all day because he got a ’leven dollar automobile when he wanted a areaplane big enough to carry the cat over the barn.

“This Christmas trust business ought to be investigated by the gov’ment and dissolved.  Talk about your tariff schedules!  What we need is somebody to pare down this Christmas gouge.  It’s the one kind of tax you can’t swear off.

“And as for you—­why, you’re goin’ daffy.  Other years I didn’t mind so much.  You spent a lot of time and some money on your annual splurge, but I will say, you took in better’n you gave.  But now you’re on the other side the fence.  These Carthage women have got you on the run.  You’ll have to give ’em twice as good as they send or you’re gone.  You’re gone anyway.  If you gave each one of ’em a gold platter full of diamonds they’d say you’d inherited Aunt Ida’s stinginess as well as her money.”

Mrs. Budlong went on twisting her fingers:  “Oh, of course you’re right, Ule.  But what’s the use of being right when it’s so hateful?  All I can think of is that Everybody in town is going to give me a present!  Everybody!”

“Can’t you take your last year’s presents and pass ’em along to other folks?”

“Everybody would recognize them, and I’d be the talk of the town.”

“You’re that anyway, so what difference does it make?”

“I’d rather die.”

“You’d save a lot of money and trouble if you did.”

“Just look at the list of presents I must give.”

She handed him a bundle of papers.  He pushed up his spectacles and put on his reading glasses, and instantly snorted: 

“Say!  What is this? the town directory?”

He had not read far down the list when he missed one important name.  “You’ve overlooked Mrs. Alsop.”

“Oh, her!  I’ve quarreled with her.  We don’t speak, thank heaven.”