one. And it's
proved that Captain Puffin went there too, because the note which his
housemaid found on the table before she saw the challenge from the
Major, which was on the chimney-piece, said that he had been called away
very suddenly. No: they both went to catch the early train in order to
go away before they could be stopped, and kill each other. But why
didn't they go? What happened? Don't suppose the outside porter showed
them how wicked they were, confirmation-class or no confirmation-class.
Stumps me. Almost wish Elizabeth was here. She's good at guessing."

The Padre's eye brightened. Reaction after the perils of the morning,
crab and port combined to make a man of him.

"Eh, 'tis a bonny wee drappie of port whatever, Mistress Plaistow," he
said. "And I dinna ken that ye're far wrang in jaloosing that Mistress
Mapp might have a wee bitty word to say aboot it a', 'gin she had the
mind."

"She was wrong about the portmanteau," said Diva. "Confessed she was
wrong."

"Hoots! I'm not mindin' the bit pochmantie," said the Padre.

"What else does she know?" asked Diva feverishly.

There was no doubt that the Padre had the fullest attention of the two
ladies again, and there was no need to talk Scotch any more.

"Begin at the beginning," he said. "What do we suppose was the cause of
the quarrel?"

"Anything," said Diva. "Golf, tiger-skins, coal-strike, summer-time."

He shook his head.

"I grant you words may pass on such subjects," he said. "We feel keenly,
I know, about summer-time in Tilling, though we shall all be reconciled
over that next Sunday, when real time, God's time, as I am venturing to
call it in my sermon, comes in again."

Diva had to bite her tongue to prevent herself bolting off on this new
scent. After all, she had invested in crab to learn about duelling, not
about summer-time.

"Well?" she said.

"We may have had words on that subject," said the Padre, booming as if
he was in the pulpit already, "but we should, I hope, none of us go so
far as to catch the earliest train with pistols, in defence of our
conviction about summer-time. No, Mrs. Plaistow, if you are right, and
there is something to be said for your view, in thinking that they both
went to such lengths as to be in time for the early train, in order to
fight a duel undisturbed, you must look for a more solid cause than
that."

Diva vainly racked her brains to think of anything more worthy of the
highest pitches of emoti