Fergusson, Harvey. Hot Saturday (New York: Knopf, 1926) 261 p.

Alma Budlong is the librarian in a small western town. Alma's father is a retired judge and the Budlongs were once social leaders in the town. Now that old Judge Budlong is old and senile their social prestige has fallen on hard times but Alma still has influence. “She was one of the first women in town to smoke openly. Not many others would have dared to start, but when Alma started, several dared to follow.” (p. 120).

In the library, too, she had done things no one else would have attempted. She made the city council double the appropriation for books and she made the board of governors buy whatever books she told them to buy. She certainly had furnished the town with some spicy reading. Out went the Elsie books and Mühlbach's historical romances and a lot of other stuff that had slept under the dust for years. In came H.G. Wells and Arnold Bennett and even Dreiser and Mencken. (p. 120-121).

Alma had once been involved with a man but he had left town suddenly. Now a young friend describes her with

the pity of youth full-blown for youth beginning to wane. Alma could still make herself look young sometimes at night, but lying tired in daylight she seemed almost middle-aged. Her figure was still good and she had pretty ankles, but her neck was beginning to wrinkle and she had a few grey hairs – and then her glasses.... Funny what a handicap glasses were to a woman. Men never liked them and they must be always falling off and getting in the way at critical moments.... That was another trouble with working. You wore glasses and looked tired. Alma began to look old just about the time she went to work at the library. (p. 30).

Those comments I think are meant to be more revealing of the young friend than of Alma.