means are small, become small themselves, when their means get beyond
living beyond. The Budlongs began to figure percentages on sums left
in the bank or put out on mortgages. They began to think money; and
money is money, large or small. Mrs. Budlong began to feel that she
had been unjust to Aunt Ida. What she had called miserliness was
really prudence and thrift and other pleasant-sounding virtues. What
she had called liberality was wanton waste.

Finally her social debts reached such a mass that she decided to give a
large dinner to wipe off a great number at once. But now when she
calculated that the olives, the turkey, the Malaga grapes, the English
walnuts, the salted almonds and a man from the hotel to wait on table,
would total up twenty-five dollars or so, she found herself figuring
how much twenty-five dollars would amount to in twenty-five years at
compound interest.

She grew frantic to be quit of Carthage--to rub it off her visiting
list. Unconsciously her motto became Cato's ruthless _Carthago delenda
est_.

But she could neither delete Carthage from her map, nor free her feet
from its dust. Her husband's business required him yet awhile. Even
to close it up took time. And he would not, and could not, borrow
money on Aunt Ida's estate till he was sure that it was his.

But all the while the festival reveled on. People in Carthage to whom
New York was an inaccessible Carcassone, were now planning to visit
Mrs. Budlong there at the palatial home she had described. Some of
them frankly told her they were coming to see her. Wealth took on a
new discomfort.