much startled.

"Hullo!" she said. "Didn't hear you. Got Janet's frock you see."

("What makes Diva's face so red?" thought Miss Mapp.)

"So I see, darling," she said. "Lovely rose-garden. How well it suits
you, dear! Did Janet mind?"

"No. Promised her a new frock at Christmas."

"That will be nice for Janet," said Elizabeth enthusiastically. "Shall
we pop into the garden, dear, till my guests come?"

Diva was glad to pop into the garden and get away from the immediate
vicinity of the cupboard, for though she had planned and looked forward
to the exposure of Elizabeth's hoarding, she had not meant it to come,
as it now probably would, in crashes of tins and bursting of bovril
bottles. Again she had intended to have opened that door quite casually
and innocently while she was being dummy, so that everyone could see how
accidental the exposure was, and to have gone poking about the cupboard
in Elizabeth's absence was a shade too professional, so to speak, for
the usual detective work of Tilling. But the fuse was set now. Sooner or
later the explosion must come. She wondered as they went out to commune
with Elizabeth's sweet flowers till the other guests arrived how great a
torrent would be let loose. She did not repent her exploration--far from
it--but her pleasurable anticipations were strongly diluted with
suspense.

Miss Mapp had found such difficulty in getting eight players together
to-day, that she had transgressed her principles and asked Mrs. Poppit
as well as Isabel, and they, with Diva, the two Bartletts, and the Major
and the Captain, formed the party. The moment Mrs. Poppit appeared,
Elizabeth hated her more than ever, for she put up her glasses, and
began to give her patronizing advice about her garden, which she had not
been allowed to see before.

"You have quite a pretty little piece of garden, Miss Mapp," she said,
"though, to be sure, I fancied from what you said that it was more
extensive. Dear me, your roses do not seem to be doing very well.
Probably they are old plants and want renewing. You must send your
gardener round--you keep a gardener?--and I will let you have a dozen
vigorous young bushes."

Miss Mapp licked her dry lips. She kept a kind of gardener: two days a
week.

"Too good of you," she said, "but that rose-bed is quite sacred, dear
Mrs. Poppit. Not all the vigorous young bushes in the world would tempt
me. It's my 'Friendship's Border:' some dear friend gave me each of my