iss Mapp," he said. "If you dare to say
that I was drunk, Major and I, my fren' the Major and I will say you
were drunk. Perhaps you think my fren' the Major's drunk too. But sure's
I live, I'll say we were taking lil' walk in the moonlight and found you
trying to post a letter with no 'dress on it, and couldn't find the slit
to put it in. But 'slong as you say nothing, I say nothing. Can't say
fairer than that. Liberal terms. Mutual Protection Society. Your lips
sealed, our lips sealed. Strictly private. All trespassers will be
prosecuted. By order. Hic!"

Miss Mapp felt that Major Benjy ought instantly to have challenged his
ignoble friend to another duel for this insolent suggestion, but he did
nothing of the kind, and his silence, which had some awful quality of
consent about it, chilled her mind, even as the sea-mist, now thick and
cold, made her certain that her nose was turning red. She still boiled
with rage, but her mind grew cold with odious apprehensions: she was
like an ice-pudding with scalding sauce.... There they all stood, veiled
in vapours, and outlined by the red light that streamed from the
still-open door of the intoxicated Puffin, getting colder every moment.

"Yessorno," said Puffin, with chattering teeth.

Bitter as it was to accept those outrageous terms, there really seemed,
without the Major's support, to be no way out of it.

"Yes," said Miss Mapp.

Puffin gave a loud crow.

"The ayes have it, Major," he said. "So we're all frens again. Goonight
everybody."

* * * * *

Miss Mapp let herself into her house in an agony of mortification. She
could scarcely realize that her little expedition, undertaken with so
much ardent and earnest curiosity only a quarter of an hour ago, had
ended in so deplorable a surfeit of sensation. She had gone out in
obedience to an innocent and, indeed, laudable desire to ascertain how
Major Benjy spent those evenings on which he had deceived her into
imagining that, owing to her influence, he had gone ever so early to
bed, only to find that he sat up ever so late and that she was fettered
by a promise not to breathe to a soul a single word about the depravity
of Captain Puffin, on pain of being herself accused out of the mouth of
two witnesses of being equally depraved herself. More wounding yet was
the part played by her Major Benjy in these odious transactions, and it
was only possible to conclude that he put a higher value on