their Santa Clauses, as women put on summer straw hats at Easter.

Mrs. Budlong's hands sought and wrung each other as if in mutual
reproach. They had been pouring tea and passing wafers when they
should have been Dorcassing at their Christmas tasks. It had been
left for her husband of all people to warn her that her own special
Bacchanal was imminent.

If he had been a day later, the neighbors would have anticipated him
as well as the magazines. The Christmas idea seemed to strike the
whole town at once. Mrs. Budlong became the victim of her own
classic device of pretending to let slip a secret. The townswomen
shamelessly turned her own formula against her.

Mrs. Detwiller met her at church and said:

"Yesterday morning at eleven I had the most curious presentiment, my
dear. I remember the hour so exactly because I've been making it a
rule to begin work on your Christmas present every morning at-- Oh,
but I didn't inTend to let you know. No, dearie, I won't tell you
what it is. But I can't help believing it's Just what you'll need in
New York."

Myra Eppley, with whom Mrs. Budlong had never exchanged Christmas
presents, at all, but with whom an intimacy had sprung up since Mrs.
Budlong came into the reputation of her money--Myra Eppley had the
effrontery to call up on the telephone and say:

"Would you mind telling me, my dear, the shade of wall paper you're
going to have in your New York parlor, because I'm making you the