Miss Mapp laughed.
“Oh, you must excuse me,” she said with a glance at Mrs. Poppit’s brocaded silk. “I can’t bear fuchsias. They always remind me of over-dressed women. Ah, there’s Mr. Bartlett. How de do, Padre. And dear Evie!”
Dear Evie appeared fascinated by Diva’s dress.
“Such beautiful rosebuds,” she murmured, “and what lovely shade of purple. And Elizabeth’s poppies too, quite a pair of you. But surely this morning, Diva, didn’t I see your good Janet in just such another dress, and I thought at the time how odd it was that——”
“If you saw Janet this morning,” said Diva quite firmly, “you saw her in her print dress.”
“And here’s Major Benjy,” said Miss Mapp, who had made her slip about his Christian name yesterday, and had been duly entreated to continue slipping. “And Captain Puffin. Well, that is nice! Shall we go into my little garden shed, dear Mrs. Poppit, and have our tea?”
Major Flint was still a little lame, for his golf to-day had been of the nature of gardening, and he hobbled up the steps behind the ladies, with that little cock-sparrow sailor following him and telling the Padre how badly and yet how successfully he himself had played.
“Pleasantest room in Tilling, I always say, Miss Elizabeth,” said he, diverting his mind from a mere game to the fairies.
“My dear little room,” said Miss Mapp, knowing that it was much larger than anything in Mrs. Poppit’s house. “So tiny!”
“Oh, not a bad-sized little room,” said Mrs. Poppit encouragingly. “Much the same proportions, on a very small scale, as the throne-room at Buckingham Palace.”