d warm. Good morning,
dear Susan! You shopping, too, like Major Benjy and me? How is your dear
Isabel?"

Miss Mapp made the most of that morning; the magnanimity of her
forgiveness earned her incredible dividends. Up and down the High Street
she went, with Major Benjy in attendance, buying grocery, stationery,
gloves, eau-de-Cologne, boot-laces, the "Literary Supplement" of _The
Times_, dried camomile flowers, and every conceivable thing that she
might possibly need in the next week, so that her shopping might be as
protracted as possible. She allowed him (such was her firmness in
"spoiling" him) to carry her shopping-basket, and when that was full,
she decked him like a sacrificial ram with little parcels hung by loops
of string. Sometimes she took him into a shop in case there might be
someone there who had not seen him yet on her leash; sometimes she left
him on the pavement in a prominent position, marking, all the time, just
as if she had been a clinical thermometer, the feverish curiosity that
was burning in Tilling's veins. Only yesterday she had spread the news
of his cowardice broadcast; to-day their comradeship was of the
chattiest and most genial kind. There he was, carrying her basket, and
wearing frock-coat and top-hat and hung with parcels like a
Christmas-tree, spending the entire morning with her instead of golfing
with Puffin. Miss Mapp positively shuddered as she tried to realize what
her state of mind would have been, if she had seen him thus coupled
with Diva. She would have suspected (rightly in all probability) some
loathsome intrigue against herself. And the cream of it was that until
she chose, nobody could possibly find out what had caused this
metamorphosis so paralysing to inquiring intellects, for Major Benjy
would assuredly never tell anyone that there was a reconciliation, due
to his apology for his rudeness, when he had stood by and permitted an
intoxicated Puffin to suggest disgraceful bargains. Tilling--poor
Tilling--would go crazy with suspense as to what it all meant.

Never had there been such a shopping! It was nearly lunch-time when, at
her front door, Major Flint finally stripped himself of her parcels and
her companionship and hobbled home, profusely perspiring, and lame from
so much walking on pavements in tight patent-leather shoes. He was weary
and footsore; he had had no golf, and, though forgiven, was but a wreck.
She had made him ridiculous all the morning with his frock-co