This was too much.
“Diva, I didn’t think it of you,” said Miss Mapp in a shaking voice. “You saw my new frock yesterday, and you were filled with malice and envy, Diva, just because I had thought of using flowers off an old chintz as well as you, and came out first with it. You had meant to wear that purple frock yourself—though I must say it fits Janet perfectly—and just because I was first in the field you did this. You gave Janet that frock, so that I should be dressed in the same style as your parlourmaid, and you’ve got a black heart, Diva!”
“That’s nonsense,” said Diva firmly. “Heart’s as red as anybody’s, and talking of black hearts doesn’t become you, Elizabeth. You knew I was cutting out roses from my curtains——”
Miss Mapp laughed shrilly.
“Well, if I happen to notice that you’ve taken your chintz curtains down,” she said with an awful distinctness that showed the wisdom-teeth of which Diva had got three at the most, “and pink bunches of roses come flying out of your window into the High Street, even my poor wits, small as they are, are equal to drawing the conclusion that you are cutting roses out of curtains. Your well-known fondness for dress did the rest. With your permission, Diva, I intend to draw exactly what conclusions I please on every occasion, including this one.”
“Ho! That’s how you got the idea then,” said Diva. “I knew you had cribbed it from me.”
“Cribbed?” asked Miss Mapp, in ironical ignorance of what so vulgar and slangy an expression meant.
“Cribbed means taking what isn’t yours,” said Diva. “Even then, if you had only acted in a straightforward manner——”
Miss Mapp, shaken as with palsy, regretted that she had let slip, out of pure childlike joy, in irony, the manner in which she had obtained the poppy-notion, but in a quarrel regrets are useless, and she went on again.
“And would you very kindly explain how or when I have acted in a manner that was not straightforward,” she asked with laborious politeness. “Or do I understand that a monopoly of cutting up chintz curtains for personal adornment has been bestowed on you by Act of Parliament?”