er the future
might hold, it was not likely that he would begin now at this moment
when she was so properly punishing him for his unchivalrous behaviour.
But what could the frock-coat mean? (There was Captain Puffin's servant
picking up the sponge. She hoped it was covered with mud.) It would be a
very just continuation of his punishment to tell Withers she would not
see him, but the punishment which that would entail on herself would be
more than she could bear, for she would not know a moment's peace while
she was ignorant of the nature of his errand. Could he be on his way to
the Padre's to challenge him for that very stinging allusion to
sand-dunes yesterday, and was he come to give her fair warning, so that
she might stop a duel? It did not seem likely. Unable to bear the
suspense any longer, she adjusted her face in the glass to an expression
of frozen dignity and threw over her shoulders the cloak trimmed with
blue in which, on the occasion of the Prince's visit, she had sat down
in the middle of the road. That matched the Major's frock-coat.

She hummed a little song as she mounted the few steps to the
garden-room, and stopped just after she had opened the door. She did not
offer to shake hands.

"You wish to see me, Major Flint?" she said, in such a voice as icebergs
might be supposed to use when passing each other by night in the Arctic
seas.

Major Flint certainly looked as if he hated seeing her, instead of
wishing it, for he backed into a corner of the room and dropped his hat.

"Good morning, Miss Mapp," he said. "Very good of you. I--I called."

He clearly had a difficulty in saying what he had come to say, but if he
thought that she was proposing to give him the smallest assistance, he
was in error.

"Yes, you called," said she. "Pray be seated."

He did so; she stood; he got up again.

"I called," said the Major, "I called to express my very deep regret at
my share, or, rather, that I did not take a more active share--I
allowed, in fact, a friend of mine to speak to you in a manner that did
equal discredit----"

Miss Mapp put her head on one side, as if trying to recollect some
trivial and unimportant occurrence.

"Yes?" she said. "What was that?"

"Captain Puffin," began the Major.

Then Miss Mapp remembered it all.

"I hope, Major Flint," she said, "that you will not find it necessary to
mention Captain Puffin's name to me. I wish him nothing but well, but he
and his are no concern of