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who return calls on time or a little ahead. That made it necessary for you to return hers earlier. If you didn't, she called you up on the telephone and asked you why you hadn't. You had to promise to come over at once or she'd talk to you till your ear was welded to the telephone. Then if you broke your promise she called you up about that. She got in from fifty-two to a hundred and four calls a year, where one or two would have amply sufficed for all she had to say.
It was due to her that Carthage had such a lively social existence--for its size. Once, when she fell ill, the people felt suddenly as passengers feel when a street car is suddenly braked back on its haunches. All Carthage found itself wavering and poised on tiptoe and clinging to straps; and then it sogged back on its heels and waited till the car should resume progress. Mrs. Budlong was the town's motorman--or "motorneer," as they say in Carthage.
Before she was out of bed, she had invitations abroad for a convalescent tea, and everybody said, "Here we go again!"
If strangers visited Carthage, Mrs. Budlong counted them her clients the moment they arrived. Of course, the merely commercial visitors she left to the hackmen at the station, but friends or relatives of prominent people could not escape Mrs. Budlong's well-meant attentions. It was sometimes embarrassing when relatives appeared--for everybody has Concealed Relatives that he is perfectly willing to leave in concealment.
Mrs. Alex. (pronounced Ellick) Stubblebine never forgave Mrs. Budlong for dragging into the limelight some obscure cousins of her husband's who had drifted into Carthage to borrow money on their farm. Mrs. Stubblebine was always bragging about her people, her own people that is. Her husband's people, of course, were after all only Stubblebines, while her maiden name was Dilatush; and the Dilatushes, as everybody knew, were related by marriage to the Tatums.
But these were Stubblebines that came to town. Mrs. Stubblebine could hardly s