om him.

"And what a lovely idea to have a blue floor, dear," she said. "How
original you are. And that pretty scarlet ceiling. But don't you find
when you're painting that all these bright colours disturb you?"

"Not a bit: they stimulate your sense of colour."

Miss Mapp moved towards the screen.

"What a delicious big screen," she said.

"Yes, but don't go behind it, Mapp," said Irene, "or you'll see my model
undressing."

Miss Mapp retreated from it precipitately, as from a wasp's nest, and
examined some of the studies on the wall, for it was more than probable
from the unfinished picture on the easel that Adam lurked behind the
delicious screen. Terrible though it all was, she was conscious of an
unbridled curiosity to know who Adam was. It was dreadful to think that
there could be any man in Tilling so depraved as to stand to be looked
at with so little on....

Irene strolled round the walls with her.

"Studies of Lucy," she said.

"I see, dear," said Miss Mapp. "How clever! Legs and things! But when
you have your bridge-party, won't you perhaps cover some of them up, or
turn them to the wall? We should all be looking at your pictures instead
of attending to our cards. And if you were thinking of asking the Padre,
you know...."

They were approaching the corner of the room where the screen stood,
when a movement there as if Adam had hit it with his elbow made Miss
Mapp turn round. The screen fell flat on the ground and within a yard of
her stood Mr. Hopkins, the proprietor of the fish-shop just up the
street. Often and often had Miss Mapp had pleasant little conversations
with him, with a view to bringing down the price of flounders. He had
little bathing-drawers on....

"Hullo, Hopkins, are you ready?" said Irene. "You know Miss Mapp, don't
you?"

Miss Mapp had not imagined that Time and Eternity combined could hold so
embarrassing a moment. She did not know where to look, but wherever she
looked, it should not be at Hopkins. But (wherever she looked) she could
not be unaware that Hopkins raised his large bare arm and touched the
place where his cap would have been, if he had had one.

"Good-morning, Hopkins," she said. "Well, Irene darling, I must be
trotting, and leave you to your----" she hardly knew what to call
it--"to your work."

She tripped from the room, which seemed to be entirely full of unclothed
limbs, and redder than one of Mr. Hopkins's boiled lobsters hurried down
the street. Sh