ery pretty, and in order to let it enjoy itself
more, she opened the window and it fluttered out into the garden. Before
it had flown many yards, a starling ate most of it up, so the starling
enjoyed itself too.

Miss Mapp fully shared in the pleasure first of the tortoise-shell and
then of the starling, for she was enjoying herself very much too, though
her left wrist was terribly stiff. But Major Benjy was so cruel: he
insisted on her learning that turn of the wrist which was so important
in golf.

"Upon my word, you've got it now, Miss Elizabeth," he had said to her
yesterday, and then made her do it all over again fifty times more.
("Such a bully!") Sometimes she struck the ground, sometimes she struck
the ball, sometimes she struck the air. But he had been very much
pleased with her. And she was very much pleased with him. She forgot
about the butterfly and remembered the starling.

It was idle to deny that the last six weeks had been a terrific strain,
and the strain on her left wrist was nothing to them. The worst tension
of all, perhaps, was when Diva had bounced in with the news that the
Contessa was coming back. That was so like Diva: the only foundation for
the report proved to be that Figgis had said to her Janet that Mr. Wyse
was coming back, and either Janet had misunderstood Figgis, or Diva
(far more probably) had misunderstood Janet, and Miss Mapp only hoped
that Diva had not done so on purpose, though it looked like it. Stupid
as poor Diva undoubtedly was, it was hard for Charity itself to believe
that she had thought that Janet really said that. But when this report
proved to be totally unfounded, Miss Mapp rose to the occasion, and said
that Diva had spoken out of stupidity and not out of malice towards
her....

Then in due course Mr. Wyse had come back and the two Poppits had come
back, and only three days ago one Poppit had become a Wyse, and they had
all three gone for a motor-tour on the Continent in the Royce. Very
likely they would go as far south as Capri, and Susan would stay with
her new grand Italian connections. What she would be like when she got
back Miss Mapp forbore to conjecture, since it was no use anticipating
trouble; but Susan had been so grandiose about the Wyses, multiplying
their incomes and their acreage by fifteen or twenty, so Miss Mapp
conjectured, and talking so much about county families, that the
liveliest imagination failed to picture what she would make of the
Fara