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Updated: June 8, 2025
Had not Withers been present, who might have misconstrued her action, Miss Mapp would have kissed the note; failing that, she forgave Mrs. Poppit for being an M.B.E. "The dear woman!" she said. "She has heard, and has told him." Of course she need not ask Mr. Wyse to tea now....
Fancy my running straight into it all! How well he looked." This was all rather lame, and Miss Mapp hailed Mrs. Poppit's appearance from the station as a welcome diversion.... Mrs. Poppit was looking vexed. "I hope you saw him well, Mrs. Poppit," said Miss Mapp, "after meeting two trains, and taking all that trouble." "Saw who?" said Mrs. Poppit with a deplorable lack both of manner and grammar.
Isabel Poppit lived with a flashy and condescending mother just round the corner beyond the gardener's cottage, and opposite the west end of the church. They were comparatively new inhabitants of Tilling, having settled here only two or three years ago, and Tilling had not yet quite ceased to regard them as rather suspicious characters. Suspicion smouldered, though it blazed no longer.
Poppit's guests, rendering them, like incomplete Marconi installations, capable of receiving, but not of transmitting. Poppit from exposing herself further. The rest of them, Mrs. Poppit implied, might do what they liked, for they did not matter; but she she must put on her Order and make her curtsy.
You must be very kind to her, dear ladies. She is an insatiable bridge-player. She has heard much of the great players she will meet here." That decided Mrs. Poppit. She would join the correspondence class conducted by "Little Slam," in "Cosy Corner." Little Slam, for the sum of two guineas, payable in advance, engaged to make first-class players of anyone with normal intelligence.
"Encourage me to hope," were the first words that met her eye: Mrs. Poppit had been encouraging him to hope again. "To dine at Mr. Wyse's to-morrow," she said. "No doubt the announcement will be made then. He probably wrote it before he went to the station. Yes, a few friends. You going, dear?" Diva instantly got up. "Think I'll run home and see," she said.
Oh, and there's the Padre, Major Benjy! How quickly he walks! Yes, he sees us! And there's Mrs. Poppit; everybody is enjoying the sunshine. What a beautiful fur coat, though I should think she found it very heavy and warm. Good morning, dear Susan! You shopping, too, like Major Benjy and me? How is your dear Isabel?"
"Much the same proportions, on a very small scale, as the throne-room at Buckingham Palace." "That beautiful throne-room!" exclaimed Miss Mapp. "A cup of tea, dear Mrs. Poppit? None of that naughty red-currant fool, I am afraid. And a little chocolate-cake?"
Her mode of address, too, bore out this misleading impression: nothing, for instance, could have been more genial just now than her telephone voice to Isabel Poppit, or her smile to Withers, even while she so strongly suspected her of using the telephone for her own base purposes, and as she passed along the High Street, she showered little smiles and bows on acquaintances and friends.
Poppit, with her glasses up, followed by Isabel, was employed in making a tour of the room, in case, as Miss Mapp had already determined, she never saw it again, examining the quality of the carpet, the curtains, the chair-backs with the air of a doubtful purchaser. "And quite a quantity of books, I see," she announced as she came opposite the fatal cupboard.
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