often
has old--I mean has that fine woman, Miss Mapp, told me that I work too
hard at night! Recommended me to get earlier to bed, and do my work
between six and eight in the morning! Six and eight in the morning!
That's a queer time of day to recommend an old campaigner to be awake
at! Often she's talked to you, too, I bet my hat, about sitting up late
and exhausting the nervous faculties."

Major Flint choked and laughed and inhaled tobacco smoke till he got
purple in the face.

"And you sitting up one side of the street," he gasped, "pretending to
be interested in Roman roads, and me on the other pulling a long face
over my diaries, and neither of us with a Roman road or a diary to our
names. Let's have an end to such unsociable arrangements, old friend;
you bring your Roman roads and the bottle to lay the dust over to me one
night, and I'll bring my diaries and my peg over to you the next. Never
drink alone--one of my maxims in life--if you can find someone to drink
with you. And there were you within a few yards of me all the time
sitting by your old solitary self, and there was I sitting by my old
solitary self, and we each thought the other a serious-minded old
buffer, busy on his life-work. I'm blessed if I heard of two such
pompous old frauds as you and I, Captain! What a sight of hypocrisy
there is in the world, to be sure! No offence--mind: I'm as bad as you,
and you're as bad as me, and we're both as bad as each other. But no
more solitary confinement of an evening for Benjamin Flint, as long as
you're agreeable."

The advent of the taxi was announced, and arm in arm they limped down
the steep path together to the road. A little way off to the left was
the great bunker which, primarily, was the cause of their present amity.
As they drove by it, the Major waggled his red hand at it.

"Au reservoir," he said. "Back again soon!"

* * * * *

It was late that night when Miss Mapp felt that she was physically
incapable of tacking on a single poppy more to the edge of her skirt,
and went to the window of the garden-room where she had been working, to
close it. She glanced up at the top story of her own house, and saw that
the lights in the servants' rooms were out: she glanced to the right and
concluded that her gardener had gone to bed: finally, she glanced down
the street and saw with a pang of pleasure that the windows of the
Major's house showed no sign of midnight labour.