The three went to work with feverish energy, for Diva had got a start, and by four o’clock that afternoon there were enough poppies cut out to furnish, when in seed, a whole street of opium dens. The dress selected for decoration was, apart from a few mildew-spots, the colour of ripe corn, which was superbly appropriate for September. “Poppies in the corn,” said Miss Mapp over and over to herself, remembering some sweet verses she had once read by Bernard Shaw or Clement Shorter or somebody like that about a garden of sleep somewhere in Norfolk…
“No one can work as neatly as you, Withers,” she said gaily, “and I shall ask you to do the most difficult part. I want you to sew my lovely poppies over the collar and facings of the jacket, just spacing them a little and making a dainty irregularity. And then Mary—won’t you, Mary?—will do the same with the waistband while I put a border of them round the skirt, and my dear old dress will look quite new and lovely. I shall be at home to nobody, Withers, this afternoon, even if the Prince of Wales came and sat on my doorstep again. We’ll all work together in the garden, shall we, and you and Mary must scold me if you think I’m not working hard enough. It will be delicious in the garden.”
Thanks to this pleasant plan, there was not much opportunity for Withers and Mary to be idle…
Just about the time that this harmonious party began their work, a far from harmonious couple were being just as industrious in the grand spacious bunker in front of the tee to the last hole on the golf links. It was a beautiful bunker, consisting of a great slope of loose, steep sand against the face of the hill, and solidly shored up with timber. The Navy had been in better form to-day, and after a decisive victory over the Army in the morning and an indemnity of half-a-crown, its match in the afternoon, with just the last hole to play, was all square. So Captain Puffin, having the honour, hit a low, nervous drive that tapped loudly at the timbered wall of the bunker, and cuddled down below it, well protected from any future assault.
“Phew! That about settles it,” said Major Flint boisterously. “Bad place to top a ball! Give me the hole?”
This insolent question needed no answer, and Major Flint drove, skying the ball to a prodigious height. But it had to come to earth sometime, and it fell like Lucifer, son of the morning, in the middle of the same bunker… So the Army played three more, and, sweating profusely, got out. Then it was the Navy’s turn, and the Navy had to lie on its keel above the boards of the bunker, in order to reach its ball at all, and missed it twice.
“Better give it up, old chap,” said Major Flint. “Unplayable.”
“Then see me play it,” said Captain Puffin, with a chewing motion of his jaws.
“We shall miss the tram,” said the Major, and, with the intention of giving annoyance, he sat down in the bunker with his back to Captain Puffin, and lit a cigarette. At his third attempt nothing happened; at the fourth the ball flew against the boards, rebounded briskly again into the bunker, trickled down the steep, sandy slope and hit the Major’s boot.