threatening
morning."

"Very threatening," said Miss Mapp. "I hope you will do nothing rash or
dangerous."

There was a moment's silence, and the two looked from one face to
another of this fell group. They all wore fixed, inexplicable smiles.

"It will be pleasant among the sand-dunes," said the Padre, and his wife
gave a loud squeak.

"Well, we shall be missing our tram," said the Major. "Au--au reservoir,
ladies."

Nobody responded at all, and they hurried off down the street, their
bags bumping together very inconveniently.

"Something's up, Major," said Puffin, with true Tilling perspicacity, as
soon as they had got out of hearing....

* * * * *

Precisely at the same moment Miss Mapp gave a little cooing laugh.

"Now I must run and do my bittie shopping, Padre," she said, and kissed
her hand all round.... The curtain had to come down for a little while
on so dramatic a situation. Any discussion, just then, would be an
anti-climax.

CHAPTER IX

Captain Puffin found but a sombre diarist when he came over to study his
Roman roads with Major Flint that evening, and indeed he was a sombre
antiquarian himself. They had pondered a good deal during the day over
their strange reception in the High Street that morning and the
recondite allusions to bags, sand-dunes and early trains, and the more
they pondered the more probable it became that not only was something
up, but, as regards the duel, everything was up. For weeks now they had
been regarded by the ladies of Tilling with something approaching
veneration, but there seemed singularly little veneration at the back of
the comments this morning. Following so closely on the encounter with
Miss Mapp last night, this irreverent attitude was probably due to some
atheistical manoeuvre of hers. Such, at least, was the Major's view, and
when he held a view he usually stated it, did Sporting Benjy.

"We've got you to thank for this, Puffin," he said. "Upon my soul, I was
ashamed of you for saying what you did to Miss Mapp last night. Utter
absence of any chivalrous feeling hinting that if she said you were
drunk you would say she was. She was as sober and lucid last night as
she was this morning. And she was devilish lucid, to my mind, this
morning."

"Pity you didn't take her part last night," said Puffin. "You thought
that was a very ingenious idea of mine to make her hold her tongue."

"There are finer things in this w