bject was
unprecedented. But never yet had "baffled" sullied her wells of pure
undefiled English.

Movement had begun; Mrs. Plaistow, carrying her wicker basket, came
round the corner by the church, in the direction of Miss Mapp's window,
and as there was a temporary coolness between them (following violent
heat) with regard to some worsted of brilliant rose-madder hue, which a
forgetful draper had sold to Mrs. Plaistow, having definitely promised
it to Miss Mapp ... but Miss Mapp's large-mindedness scorned to recall
the sordid details of this paltry appropriation. The heat had quite
subsided, and Miss Mapp was, for her part, quite prepared to let the
coolness regain the normal temperature of cordiality the moment that
Mrs. Plaistow returned that worsted. Outwardly and publicly friendly
relationships had been resumed, and as the coolness had lasted six weeks
or so, it was probable that the worsted had already been incorporated
into the ornamental border of Mrs. Plaistow's jumper or winter scarf,
and a proper expression of regret would have to do instead. So the
nearer Mrs. Plaistow approached, the more invisible she became to Miss
Mapp's eye, and when she was within saluting distance had vanished
altogether. Simultaneously Miss Poppit came out of the stationer's in
the High Street.

Mrs. Plaistow turned the corner below Miss Mapp's window, and went
bobbing along down the steep hill. She walked with the motion of those
mechanical dolls sold in the street, which have three legs set as spokes
to a circle, so that their feet emerge from their dress with Dutch and
rigid regularity, and her figure had a certain squat rotundity that
suited her gait. She distinctly looked into Captain Puffin's dining-room
window as she passed, and with the misplaced juvenility so
characteristic of her waggled her plump little hand at it. At the corner
beyond Major Flint's house she hesitated a moment, and turned off down
the entry into the side street where Mr. Wyse lived. The dentist lived
there, too, and as Mr. Wyse was away on the continent of Europe, Mrs.
Plaistow was almost certain to be visiting the other. Rapidly Miss Mapp
remembered that at Mrs. Bartlett's bridge party yesterday Mrs. Plaistow
had selected soft chocolates for consumption instead of those stuffed
with nougat or almonds. That furnished additional evidence for the
dentist, for generally you could not get a nougat chocolate at all if
Godiva Plaistow had been in the room fo