The Project Gutenberg EBook of Miss Mapp, by Edward Frederic Benson

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Title: Miss Mapp

Author: Edward Frederic Benson

Release Date: June 28, 2008 [EBook #25919]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_MISS MAPP_

_By E. F. Benson, Author of "Queen Lucia." "Dodo Wonders." &c._

_McCLELLAND & STEWART, LTD.,
TORONTO_

PREFACE

I lingered at the window of the garden-room from which Miss Mapp so
often and so ominously looked forth. To the left was the front of her
house, straight ahead the steep cobbled way, with a glimpse of the High
Street at the end, to the right the crooked chimney and the church.

The street was populous with passengers, but search as I might, I could
see none who ever so remotely resembled the objects of her vigilance.

E. F. BENSON.

Lamb House, Rye.

_Printed in Great Britain._

CHAPTER I

Miss Elizabeth Mapp might have been forty, and she had taken advantage
of this opportunity by being just a year or two older. Her face was of
high vivid colour and was corrugated by chronic rage and curiosity; but
these vivifying emotions had preserved to her an astonishing activity of
mind and body, which fully accounted for the comparative adolescence
with which she would have been credited anywhere except in the charming
little town which she had inhabited so long. Anger and the gravest
suspicions about everybody had kept her young and on the boil.

She sat, on this hot July morning, like a large bird of prey at the very
convenient window of her garden-room, the ample bow of which formed a
strategical point of high value. This garden-room, solid and spacious,
was built at right angles to the front of her house, and looked straight
down the very interesting street which debouched at its lower end into
the High Street of Tilling. Exactly opposite her front door the road
turned sharply, so that as she looked o