app....
This, in brief, was the general reason why Tilling sent notes to Mr.
Wyse. As for chatting through the telephone, which was the main use of
telephones, the thing was quite out of the question.

Miss Mapp revived a little as she made this piercing analysis of Mr.
Wyse, and the warmth of the central heating pipes, on this baffling day
of autumn tints, was comforting.... No one could say that Mr. Wyse was
not punctilious in matters of social etiquette, for though he refused
three-quarters of the invitations which were showered on him, he
invariably returned the compliment by an autograph note hoping that he
might have the pleasure of entertaining you at lunch on Thursday next,
for he always gave a small luncheon-party on Thursday. These invitations
were couched in Chesterfield-terms: Mr. Wyse said that he had met a
mutual friend just now who had informed him that you were in residence,
and had encouraged him to hope that you might give him the pleasure of
your company, etc. This was alluring diction: it presented the image of
Mr. Wyse stepping briskly home again, quite heartened up by this chance
encounter, and no longer the prey to melancholy at the thought that you
might not give him the joy. He was encouraged to hope.... These polite
expressions were traced in a neat upright hand on paper which, when he
had just come back from Italy, often bore a coronet on the top with
"Villa Faraglione, Capri" printed on the right-hand top corner and
"Amelia" (the name of his putative sister) in sprawling gilt on the
left, the whole being lightly erased. Of course he was quite right to
filch a few sheets, but it threw rather a lurid light on his character
that they should be such grand ones.

Last year only, in a fit of passion at Mr. Wyse having refused six
invitations running on the plea of other engagements, Miss Mapp had
headed a movement, the object of which was that Tilling should not
accept any of Mr. Wyse's invitations unless he accepted its. This had
met with theoretical sympathy; the Bartletts, Diva, Irene, the Poppits
had all agreed--rather absently--that it would be a very proper thing to
do, but the very next Thursday they had all, including the originator,
met on Mr. Wyse's doorstep for a luncheon-party, and the movement then
and there collapsed. Though they all protested and rebelled against such
a notion, the horrid fact remained that everybody basked in Mr. Wyse's
effulgence whenever it was disposed to shed i