as about to do. Good night, old boy. Same time to-morrow
for the tram, if you're not too badly mauled."

Miss Mapp, sitting by the hot-water pipes in the garden-room, looked out
not long after to see what the night was like. Though it was not yet
half-past ten the cowards' sitting-rooms were both dark, and she
wondered what precisely that meant. There was no bridge-party anywhere
that night, and apparently there were no diaries or Roman roads either.
Why this sober and chastened darkness?...

The Major qui-hied for his breakfast at an unusually early hour next
morning, for the courage of this resolve to placate, if possible, the
hostility of Miss Mapp had not, like that of the challenge, oozed out
during the night. He had dressed himself in his frock-coat, seen last on
the occasion when the Prince of Wales proved not to have come by the
6.37, and no female breast however furious could fail to recognize the
compliment of such a formality. Dressed thus, with top-hat and
patent-leather boots, he was clearly observed from the garden-room to
emerge into the street just when Captain Puffin's hand thrust the sponge
on to the window-sill of his bath-room. Probably he too had observed
this apparition, for his fingers prematurely loosed hold of the sponge,
and it bounded into the street. Wild surmises flashed into Miss Mapp's
active brain, the most likely of which was that Major Benjy was going to
propose to Mrs. Poppit, for if he had been going up to London for some
ceremonial occasion, he would be walking down the street instead of up
it. And then she saw his agitated finger press the electric bell of her
own door. So he was not on his way to propose to Mrs. Poppit....

She slid from the room and hurried across the few steps of garden to
the house just in time to intercept Withers though not with any idea of
saying that she was out. Then Withers, according to instructions, waited
till Miss Mapp had tiptoed upstairs, and conducted the Major to the
garden-room, promising that she would "tell" her mistress. This was
unnecessary, as her mistress knew. The Major pressed a half-crown into
her astonished hand, thinking it was a florin. He couldn't precisely
account for that impulse, but general propitiation was at the bottom of
it.

Miss Mapp meantime had sat down on her bed, and firmly rejected the idea
that his call had anything to do with marriage. During all these years
of friendliness he had not got so far as that, and, whatev