in her lawn, she had hit the ball so hard that it
rebounded from the brick-wall, which was quite a long way off, and came
back to her very feet, as if asking to be hit again by the
golf-stick--no, golf-club. She learned to keep her wonderfully observant
eye on the ball and bought one of her own. The Major lent her a
mashie--and before anyone would have thought it possible, she had
learned to propel her ball right over the bed where the snowdrops grew,
without beheading any of them in its passage. It was the turn of the
wrist that did that, and Withers cleaned the dear little mashie
afterwards, and put it safely in the corner of the garden-room.

To-day was to be epoch-making. They were to go out to the real links by
the 11.20 tram (consecrated by so many memories), and he was to call for
her at eleven. He had qui-hied for porridge fully an hour ago.

After letting out the tortoise-shell butterfly from the window looking
into the garden, she moved across to the post of observation on the
street, and arranged snowdrops in a little glass vase. There were a few
over when that was full, and she saw that a reel of cotton was close at
hand, in case she had an idea of what to do with the remainder. Eleven
o'clock chimed from the church, and on the stroke she saw him coming up
the few yards of street that separated his door from hers. So punctual!
So manly!

Diva was careering about the High Street as they walked along it, and
Miss Mapp kissed her hand to her.

"Off to play golf, darling," she said. "Is that not grand? Au
reservoir."

Diva had not missed seeing the snowdrops in the Major's button-hole, and
stood stupefied for a moment at this news. Then she caught sight of
Evie, and shot across the street to communicate her suspicions. Quaint
Irene joined then and the Padre.

"Snowdrops, i'fegs!" said he....

_Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey._

+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| Transcriber's Notes and Errata |
| |
| The following words were found in both hyphenated and |
| unhyphenated form in the text. The number of instances of |
| each is given in parentheses. |
| |
| |book-case (4) |bookcase (1) | |
| |dress-maker