There was a perfectly perceptible pause, during which Miss Mapp noticed that there were no curtains over the window. There certainly used to be, and they matched with the chintz cover of the window seat, which was decorated with little bunches of pink roses peeping through trellis. This was in the nature of a bonus: she had not up till then connected the chintz curtains with the little things that had fluttered down upon her and were now safe in her glove; her only real object in this call had been to instil a general uneasiness into Diva’s mind about the coal strike and the danger of being well provided with fuel. That she humbly hoped that she had accomplished. She got up.
“Must be going,” she said. “Such a lovely little chat! But what has happened to your pretty curtains?”
“Gone to the wash,” said Diva firmly.
“Liar,” thought Miss Mapp, as she tripped downstairs. “Diva would have sent the cover of the window-seat too, if that was the case. Liar,” she thought again as she kissed her hand to Diva, who was looking gloomily out of the window.
As soon as Miss Mapp had gained her garden-room, she examined the mysterious treasures in her left-hand glove. Without the smallest doubt Diva had taken down her curtains (and high time too, for they were sadly shabby), and was cutting the roses out of them. But what on earth was she doing that for? For what garish purpose could she want to use bunches of roses cut out of chintz curtains?
Miss Mapp had put the two specimens of which she had providentially become possessed in her lap, and they looked very pretty against the navy-blue of her skirt. Diva was very ingenious: she used up all sorts of odds and ends in a way that did credit to her undoubtedly parsimonious qualities. She could trim a hat with a tooth-brush and a banana in such a way that it looked quite Parisian till you firmly analysed its component parts, and most of her ingenuity was devoted to dress: the more was the pity that she had such a roundabout figure that her waistband always reminded you of the equator…
“Eureka!” said Miss Mapp aloud, and, though the telephone bell was ringing, and the postulant might be one of the servants’ friends ringing them up at an hour when their mistress was usually in the High Street, she glided swiftly to the large cupboard underneath the stairs which was full of the things which no right-minded person could bear to throw away: broken basket-chairs, pieces of brown paper, cardboard boxes without lids, and cardboard lids without boxes, old bags with holes in them, keys without locks and locks without keys and worn chintz covers. There was one—it had once adorned the sofa in the garden-room—covered with red poppies (very easy to cut out), and Miss Mapp dragged it dustily from its corner, setting in motion a perfect cascade of cardboard lids and some door-handles.
Withers had answered the telephone, and came to announce that Twemlow the grocer regretted he had only two large tins of corned beef, but——
“Then say I will have the tongue as well, Withers,” said Miss Mapp. “Just a tongue—and then I shall want you and Mary to do some cutting out for me.”