gliones. She already alluded to the Count as "My brother-in-law
Cecco Faraglione," but had luckily heard Diva say "Faradiddleony" in a
loud aside, which had made her a little more reticent. Susan had taken
the insignia of the Member of the British Empire with her, as she at
once conceived the idea of being presented to the Queen of Italy by
Amelia, and going to a court ball, and Isabel had taken her manuscript
book of Malaprops and Spoonerisms. If she put down all the Italian
malaprops that Mrs. Wyse would commit, it was likely that she would
bring back two volumes instead of one.

Though all these grandeurs were so rightly irritating, the departure of
the "young couple" and Isabel had left Tilling, already shocked and
shattered by the death of Captain Puffin, rather flat and purposeless.
Miss Mapp alone refused to be flat, and had never been so full of
purpose. She felt that it would be unpardonably selfish of her if she
regarded for a moment her own loss, when there was one in Tilling who
suffered so much more keenly, and she set herself with admirable
singleness of purpose to restore Major Benjy's zest in life, and fill
the gap. She wanted no assistance from others in this: Diva, for
instance, with her jerky ways would be only too apt to jar on him, and
her black dress might remind him of his loss if Miss Mapp had asked her
to go shares in the task of making the Major's evenings less lonely.
Also the weather, during the whole of January, was particularly
inclement, and it would have been too much to expect of Diva to come all
the way up the hill in the wet, while it was but a step from the Major's
door to her own. So there was little or nothing in the way of
winter-bridge as far as Miss Mapp and the Major were concerned. Piquet
with a single sympathetic companion who did not mind being rubiconned at
threepence a hundred was as much as he was up to at present.

With the end of the month a balmy foretaste of spring (such as had
encouraged the tortoiseshell butterfly to hope) set in, and the Major
used to drop in after breakfast and stroll round the garden with her,
smoking his pipe. Miss Mapp's sweet snowdrops had begun to appear, and
green spikes of crocuses pricked the black earth, and the sparrows were
having such fun in the creepers. Then one day the Major, who was going
out to catch the 11.20 tram, had a "golf-stick," as Miss Mapp so
foolishly called it, with him, and a golf-ball, and after making a
dreadful hole