ou wouldn't like to sit for me till
she's well again?"

Miss Mapp gave a little squeal and bolted into her dressmaker's. She
always felt battered after a conversation with Irene, and needed
kingfisher blue to restore her.

CHAPTER II

There is not in all England a town so blatantly picturesque as Tilling,
nor one, for the lover of level marsh land, of tall reedy dykes, of
enormous sunsets and rims of blue sea on the horizon, with so fortunate
an environment. The hill on which it is built rises steeply from the
level land, and, crowned by the great grave church so conveniently close
to Miss Mapp's residence, positively consists of quaint corners,
rough-cast and timber cottages, and mellow Georgian fronts. Corners and
quaintnesses, gems, glimpses and bits are an obsession to the artist,
and in consequence, during the summer months, not only did the majority
of its inhabitants turn out into the cobbled ways with sketching-blocks,
canvases and paintboxes, but every morning brought into the town
charabancs from neighbouring places loaded with passengers, many of whom
joined the artistic residents, and you would have thought (until an
inspection of their productions convinced you of the contrary) that some
tremendous outburst of Art was rivalling the Italian Renaissance. For
those who were capable of tackling straight lines and the intricacies of
perspective there were the steep cobbled streets of charming and
irregular architecture, while for those who rightly felt themselves
colourists rather than architectural draughtsmen, there was the view
from the top of the hill over the marshes. There, but for one straight
line to mark the horizon (and that could easily be misty) there were no
petty conventionalities in the way of perspective, and the eager
practitioner could almost instantly plunge into vivid greens and
celestial blues, or, at sunset, into pinks and chromes and rose-madder.

Tourists who had no pictorial gifts would pick their way among the
sketchers, and search the shops for cracked china and bits of brass. Few
if any of them left without purchasing one of the famous Tilling
money-boxes, made in the shape of a pottery pig, who bore on his back
that remarkable legend of his authenticity which ran:

"I won't be druv,
Though I am willing.
Good morning, my love,
Said the Pig of Tilling."

Miss Mapp had a long shelf full of these in every colour to adorn her
dining-room. The one which com