gh?" or ask the squatters on her own steps if they could find a
little corner for her. That was so interesting for them: they would
remember afterwards that just while they were engaged on their sketches,
the lady of that beautiful house at the corner, who had been playing
with her kitten in the window, came out to sketch too. She addressed
gracious and yet humble remarks to them: "I see you are painting my
sweet little home. May I look? Oh, what a lovely little sketch!" Once,
on a never-to-be-forgotten day, she observed one of them take a camera
from his pocket and rapidly focus her as she stood on the top step. She
turned full-faced and smiling to the camera just in time to catch the
click of the shutter, but then it was too late to hide her face, and
perhaps the picture might appear in the _Graphic_ or the _Sketch_, or
among the posturing nymphs of a neighbouring watering-place....

This afternoon she was content to "scriggle" through the sketchers, and
humming a little tune, she passed up to the churchyard. ("Scriggle" was
one of her own words, highly popular; it connoted squeezing and
wriggling.) There she carefully concealed herself under the boughs of
the weeping ash tree directly opposite the famous south porch of the
church. She had already drawn in the lines of this south porch on her
sketching-block, transferring them there by means of a tracing from a
photograph, so that formed a very promising beginning to her sketch. But
she was nicely placed not only with regard to her sketch, for, by
peeping through the pretty foliage of the tree, she could command the
front door of Mrs. Poppit's (M.B.E.) house.

Miss Mapp's plans for the bridge-party had, of course, been completely
upset by the encounter with Irene in the High Street. Up till that
moment she had imagined that, with the two ladies of the house and the
Bartletts and the Major and the Captain and Godiva and herself, two
complete tables of bridge would be formed, and she had, therefore,
determined that she would not be able to squeeze the party into her
numerous engagements, thereby spoiling the second table. But now
everything was changed: there were eight without her, and unless, at a
quarter to four, she saw reason to suppose, by noting the arrivals at
the house, that three bridge tables were in contemplation, she had made
up her mind to "squeeze it in," so that there would be nine gamblers,
and Isabel or her mother, if they had any sense of hospitality