ver towards the town.

It is no use denying that the Cosmic Consciousness of the ladies of
Tilling was aware of a disagreeable anti-climax to so many hopes and
fears. It had, of course, hoped for the best, but it had not expected
that the best would be quite as bad as this. The best, to put it
frankly, would have been a bandaged arm, or something of that kind.
There was still room for the more hardened optimist to hope that
something of some sort had occurred, or that something of some sort had
been averted, and that the whole affair was not, in the delicious new
slang phrase of the Padre's, which was spreading like wildfire through
Tilling, a "wash-out." Pistols might have been innocuously discharged
for all that was known to the contrary. But it looked bad.

Miss Mapp was the first to recover from the blow, and took Diva's podgy
hand.

"Diva, darling," she said, "I feel so deeply thankful. What a wonderful
and beautiful end to all our anxiety!"

There was a subconscious regret with regard to the anxiety. The anxiety
was, so to speak, a dear and beloved departed.... And Diva did not feel
so sure that the end was so beautiful and wonderful. Her grandfather,
Miss Mapp had reason to know, had been a butcher, and probably some
inherited indifference to slaughter lurked in her tainted blood.

"There's the portmanteau still," she said hopefully. "Pistols in the
portmanteau. Your idea, Elizabeth."

"Yes, dear," said Elizabeth; "but thank God I must have been very wrong
about the portmanteau. The outside-porter told me that he brought it up
from the station to Major Benjy's house half an hour ago. Fancy your not
knowing that! I feel sure he is a truthful man, for he attends the
Padre's confirmation class. If there had been pistols in it, Major Benjy
and Captain Puffin would have gone away too. I am quite happy about that
now. It went away and it has come back. That's all about the
portmanteau."

She paused a moment.

"But what does it contain, then?" she said quickly, more as if she was
thinking aloud than talking to Diva. "Why did Major Benjy pack it and
send it to the station this morning? Where has it come back from? Why
did it go there?"

She felt that she was saying too much, and pressed her hand to her head.

"Has all this happened this morning?" she said. "What a full morning,
dear! Lovely autumn leaves! I shall go home and have my lunch and rest.
Au reservoir, Diva."

Miss Mapp's eternal reservoirs had be