skip and jump.

During the first ecstasy of the good news, Mrs. Budlong had raved over
the places she was going to travel,--Paris (now pronounced Paree),
London, Vienna, St. Marks, the Lion of Lucerne--she talked like a
handbook of Cook's Tours. To successive callers she told the story
over and over till the rhapsody finally palled on her own tongue. She
began to hate Paree, London, Vienna, St. Marks, and to loathe the Lion
of Lucerne. All she wanted to do was to get out of town to some quiet
retreat. Carthage was no longer quiet. It simmered to the
boiling-over point.

Once it had been Mrs. Budlong's pride to be the social leader of
Carthage. Now that her husband was worth (or to be worth) a hundred
thousand dollars Carthage seemed a very petty parish to be the social
leader of. She began to read New York society notes with expectancy,
as one cons the Baedeker of a town one is approaching.

She lay awake nights wondering what she should wear at Mrs. Stuyvesant
Square's next party and at Mrs. Astor House's sociable. She fretted
the choice whether she should take a letter from her church to St.
Bartholomew's or to Grace or St. John's the Divine's. And all the
while she was pouring tea for the wives of harness makers and
druggists, dentists and grocers.

The more reason for not appearing before them in the same clothes
incessantly. But with a dinner or a reception or a tea or a ball every
night, her two dressy-up dresses became so familiar that at one party
when she was coming downstairs from laying off her cloak people spoke
to her dress before they could see her face. And she could hardly