Mrs. Budlong had constituted herself Entertainment Committee for all sorts of visitors.  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” when she meant “Come to our house.”  It had a Scriptural sound and was thought shocking until Carthage grew used to it.

It was due to her that several elderly men were forced into their first evening dress.  They had thought to escape through life without that ordeal.  Old Clute would have preferred to be fitted for a pine box, and would have felt about as comfortable in it.  He tried to compromise with the tailor on a garment that could serve as a Prince Albert by day and a “swaller tail” by night, but Mr. Kweskin could not manage it even though his Christian name was Moses.