“To show how little she minds your laughing,” she suggested.
“As if it wasn’t true, then. Seems like that. Wants us to think it’s not true.”
“She was very earnest about it,” said the ambassador.
Diva got up, and tripped over the outlying skirts of Mrs. Poppit’s fur coat as she went to ring the bell.
“Sorry,” she said. “Take it off and have a chat. Tea’s coming. Muffins!”
“Oh, no, thanks!” said Mrs. Poppit. “I’ve so many calls to make.”
“What? Similar calls?” asked Diva. “Wait ten minutes. Tea, Janet. Quickly.”
She whirled round the room once or twice, all corrugated with perplexity, beginning telegraphic sentences, and not finishing them: “Says it’s not true—laughs at notion of—And Mr. Wyse believes—The Padre believed. After all, the Major—Little cock-sparrow Captain Puffin—Or t’other way round, do you think?—No other explanation, you know—Might have been blood——”
She buried her teeth in a muffin.
“Believe there’s something in it,” she summed up.