I'm reecht glad, fair lady," he replied, "that my bit discourse was to
your mind. Come, wee wifie, we must be stepping."

Quite suddenly all the group, with the exception of Mrs. Poppit, melted
away. Wee wifie gave a loud squeal, as if to say something, but her
husband led her firmly off, while Diva, with rapidly revolving feet,
sped like an arrow up the centre of the High Street.

"Such a lovely morning!" said Miss Mapp to Mrs. Poppit, when there was
no one else to talk to. "And everyone looks so pleased and happy, and
all in such a hurry, busy as bees, to do their little businesses. Yes."

Mrs. Poppit began to move quietly away with the deliberate,
tortoise-like progression necessitated by the fur coat. It struck Miss
Mapp that she, too, had intended to take part in the general breaking up
of the group, but had merely been unable to get under way as fast as the
others.

"Such a lovely fur coat," said Miss Mapp sycophantically. "Such
beautiful long fur! And what is the news this morning? Has a little bird
been whispering anything?"

"Nothing," said Mrs. Poppit very decidedly, and having now sufficient
way on to turn, she went up the street down which Miss Mapp had just
come. The latter was thus left all alone with her shopping basket and
her scarf.

With the unerring divination which was the natural fruit of so many
years of ceaseless conjecture, she instantly suspected the worst. All
that busy conversation which her appearance had interrupted, all those
smiles which her presence had seemed but to render broader and more
hilarious, certainly concerned her. They could not still have been
talking about that fatal explosion from the cupboard in the garden-room,
because the duel had completely silenced the last echoes of that, and
she instantly put her finger on the spot. Somebody had been gossiping
(and how she hated gossip); somebody had given voice to what she had
been so studiously careful not to say. Until that moment, when she had
seen the rapid breaking up of the group of her friends all radiant with
merriment, she had longed to be aware that somebody had given voice to
it, and that everybody (under seal of secrecy) knew the unique
queenliness of her position, the overwhelmingly interesting role that
the violent passions of men had cast her for. She had not believed in
the truth of it herself, when that irresistible seizure of coquetry took
possession of her as she bent over her sweet chrysanthemums; but the