ptain Puffin turned extremely red. ("Now the shrimp's being boiled,"
thought Miss Mapp.)

"I can't do more than apologize," said he. He did not know whether he
was angrier with his ambassador or her.

"Did you say you couldn't do 'more,'" said Miss Mapp with an air of
great interest. "How curious! I should have thought you couldn't have
done less."

"Well, what more can I do?" asked he.

"If you think," said Miss Mapp, "that you hurt me by your conduct that
night, you are vastly mistaken. And if you think you can do no more than
apologize, I will teach you better. You can make an effort, Captain
Puffin, to break with your deplorable habits, to try to get back a
little of the self-respect, if you ever had any, which you have lost.
You can cease trying, oh, so unsuccessfully, to drag Major Benjy down to
your level. That's what you can do."

She let these withering observations blight him.

"I accept your apologies," she said. "I hope you will do better in the
future, Captain Puffin, and I shall look anxiously for signs of
improvement. We will meet with politeness and friendliness when we are
brought together and I will do my best to wipe all remembrance of your
tipsy impertinence from my mind. And you must do your best too. You are
not young, and engrained habits are difficult to get rid of. But do not
despair, Captain Puffin. And now I will ring for Withers and she will
show you out."

She rang the bell, and gave a sample of her generous oblivion.

"And we meet, do we not, this evening at Mrs. Poppit's?" she said,
looking not at him, but about a foot above his head. "Such pleasant
evenings one always has there, I hope it will not be a wet evening, but
the glass is sadly down. Oh, Withers, Captain Puffin is going. Good
morning, Captain Puffin. Such a pleasure!"

Miss Mapp hummed a rollicking little tune as she observed him totter
down the street.

"There!" she said, and had a glass of Burgundy for lunch as a treat.

CHAPTER X

The news that Mr. Wyse was to be of the party that evening at Mrs.
Poppit's and was to dine there first, _en famille_ (as he casually let
slip in order to air his French), created a disagreeable impression that
afternoon in Tilling. It was not usual to do anything more than "have a
tray" for your evening meal, if one of these winter bridge-parties
followed, and there was, to Miss Mapp's mind, a deplorable tendency to
ostentation in this dinner-giving before a party. Still, if