imperviously waterproof to all chivalrous impulses. For weeks now the sorry pair of them had enjoyed the spurious splendours of being men of blood and valour, when all the time they had put themselves to all sorts of inconvenience in catching early trains and packing bags by candle-light in order to escape the hot impulses of quarrel that, as she saw now, were probably derived from drained whisky-bottles. That mysterious holloaing about worm-casts was just such another disagreement. And, crowning rapture of all, her own position as cause of the projected duel was quite unassailed. Owing to her silence about drink, no one would suspect a mere drunken brawl: she would still figure as heroine, though the heroes were terribly dismantled. To be sure, it would have been better if their ardour about her had been such that one of them, at the least, had been prepared to face the ordeal, that they had not both preferred flight, but even without that she had much to be thankful for. “It will serve them both,” said Miss Mapp (interrupted by a sneeze, for she had been sitting up in bed for quite a considerable time), “right.”
To one of Miss Mapp’s experience, the first step of her new and delightful strategic campaign was obvious, and she spent hardly any time at all in the window of her garden-room after breakfast next morning, but set out with her shopping-basket at an unusually early hour. She shuddered as she passed between the front doors of her miscreant neighbours, for the chill of last night’s mist and its dreadful memories still lingered there, but her present errand warmed her soul even as the tepid November day comforted her body. No sign of life was at present evident in those bibulous abodes, no qui-his had indicated breakfast, and she put her utmost irony into
