ot to hear, and took his heaped
plate and brimming glass in the direction of Irene.

"But I'm sure Captain Puffin played quite beautifully too," said Miss
Mapp in the vain attempt to detain him. She liked to collect all the men
round her, and then scold them for not talking to the other ladies.

"Well, a game's a game," said the Major. "It gets through the hours,
Miss Mapp. Yes: we finished at the fourteenth hole, and hurried back to
more congenial society. And what have you done to-day? Fairy-errands,
I'll be bound. Titania! Ha!"

Suet errands and errands about a missing article of underclothing were
really the most important things that Miss Mapp had done to-day, now
that her bridge-party scheme had so miscarried, but naturally she would
not allude to these.

"A little gardening," she said. "A little sketching. A little singing.
Not time to change my frock and put on something less shabby. But I
wouldn't have kept sweet Isabel's bridge-party waiting for anything, and
so I came straight from my painting here. Padre, I've been trying to
draw the lovely south porch. But so difficult! I shall give up trying to
draw, and just enjoy myself with looking. And there's your dear Evie!
How de do, Evie love?"

Godiva Plaistow had taken off her cloud for purposes of mastication, but
wound it tightly round her head again as soon as she had eaten as much
as she could manage. This had to be done on one side of her mouth, or
with the front teeth in the nibbling manner of a rabbit. Everybody, of
course, by now knew that she had had a wisdom tooth out at one p.m. with
gas, and she could allude to it without explanation.

"Dreamed I was playing bridge," she said, "and had a hand of aces. As I
played the first it went off in my hand. All over. Blood. Hope it'll
come true. Bar the blood."

Miss Mapp found herself soon afterwards partnered with Major Flint and
opposed by Irene and the Padre. They had hardly begun to consider their
first hands when Boon staggered out into the garden under the weight of
a large wooden bucket, packed with ice, that surrounded an interior
cylinder.

"Red currant fool at last," thought Miss Mapp, adding aloud: "O poor
little me, is it, to declare? Shall I say 'no trumps?'"

"Mustn't consult your partner, Mapp," said Irene, puffing the end of her
cigarette out of its holder. Irene was painfully literal.

"I don't, darling," said Miss Mapp, beginning to fizz a little. "No
trumps. Not a trump. Not any s