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Then she waited. About a quarter past one she gave it up, and duly telephoned, according to promise, viâ Janet and Withers, to Miss Mapp to say that Mr. Wyse had not yet hoped. It was very unpleasant to let them know, but if she had herself rung up and been answered by Elizabeth, who usually rushed to the telephone, she felt that she would sooner have choked than have delivered this message.
Miss Elizabeth Mapp might have been forty, and she had taken advantage of this opportunity by being just a year or two older.
I will not," cried Miss Mapp, "say a word to defend or justify myself. What is true will prevail. It comes in the Bible." Mrs. Poppit was too much interested in what she said to mind where it came from. "What can I do?" she asked. "Contradict, dear, the rumour that I have had anything to do with the terrible thing which might have happened last week. Say on my authority that it is so.
That was when." It was bitter, no doubt, but the bitterness could be transmuted into an amazing sweetness. "Then now I can speak," said Miss Mapp with a sigh of great relief. "Oh, it has been so hard keeping silence, but I felt I ought to. I knew all along, Diva dear, all, all along." "How?" asked Diva with a fallen crest. Miss Mapp laughed merrily.
General manoeuvres in Tilling, the gradual burstings of fluttering life from the chrysalis of the night, the emergence of the ladies of the town with their wicker-baskets in their hands for housekeeping purchases, the exodus of men to catch the 11.20 a.m. steam-tram out to the golf links, and other first steps in the duties and diversions of the day, did not get into full swing till half-past ten, and Miss Mapp had ample time to skim the headlines of her paper and indulge in chaste meditations about the occupants of these two houses, before she need really make herself alert to miss nothing.
It was at this identical moment that Major Flint came out of his house and qui-hied cheerily to Puffin. Miss Mapp and the Padre, deep in these bloody possibilities, neither saw nor heard them. They passed together down the road and into the High Street, unconscious that their very look and action was being more commented on than the Epistle to the Hebrews.
Still, if the cutting of cards malignantly ordained that Miss Mapp was ejected, it was only reasonable to expect that after her magnanimity to the United Services, either Major Benjy or Captain Puffin would be so obdurate in his insistence that she must play instead of him, that it would be only ladylike to yield.
She gave a shrill little laugh. "Oh, no, thank you, Boon!" she said. "I mustn't have any more. Delicious, though." Major Flint let Boon fill up his cup while he was not looking. "And we owe this to your grandmother, Miss Mapp?" he asked gallantly. "That's a second debt." Miss Mapp acknowledged this polite subtlety with a reservation. "But not the champagne in it, Major," she said.
Miss Mapp found herself soon afterwards partnered with Major Flint and opposed by Irene and the Padre. They had hardly begun to consider their first hands when Boon staggered out into the garden under the weight of a large wooden bucket, packed with ice, that surrounded an interior cylinder. "Red currant fool at last," thought Miss Mapp, adding aloud: "O poor little me, is it, to declare?
Miss Mapp had tried the expedient of sending Withers to the telephone when she wanted to get at Mr. Wyse, but this had not succeeded, for Withers and Mr. Wyse's cook quarrelled so violently before they got to business that Mr. Figgis had to calm the cook and Withers to complain to Miss Mapp.... This, in brief, was the general reason why Tilling sent notes to Mr. Wyse.
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