with the lightness of one
of the white butterflies and turning the trick. "Useful little
trumpy----"

She broke off suddenly from the chant of victory which ladies of Tilling
were accustomed to indulge in during cross-roughs, for she discovered in
her hand another more than useless little clubby.... The silence that
succeeded became tense in quality. Miss Mapp knew she had revoked and
squeezed her brains to think how she could possibly dispose of the card,
while there was a certain calmness about the Padre, which but too
clearly indicated that he was quite content to wait for the inevitable
disclosure. This came at the last trick, and though Miss Mapp made one
forlorn attempt to thrust the horrible little clubby underneath the
other cards and gather them up, the Padre pounced on it.

"What ho, fair lady!" he said, now completely restored. "Methinks thou
art forsworn! Let me have a keek at the last trick but three! Verily I
wis that thou didst trump ye club aforetime. I said so; there it is. Eh,
that's bonny for us, partner!"

Miss Mapp, of course, denied it all, and a ruthless reconstruction of
the tricks took place. The Major, still busy with red-currant fool, was
the last to grasp the disaster, and then instantly deplored the
unsportsmanlike greed of his adversaries.

"Well, I should have thought in a friendly game like this----" he said.
"Of course, you're within your right, Bartlett: might is right, hey? but
upon my word, a pound of flesh, you know.... Can't think what made you
do it, partner."

"You never asked me if I had any more clubs," said Miss Mapp shrilly,
giving up for the moment the contention that she had not revoked. "I
always ask if my partner has no more of a suit, and I always maintain
that a revoke is more the partner's fault than the player's. Of course,
if our adversaries claim it----"

"Naturally we do, Mapp," said Irene. "You were down on me sharp enough
the other day."

Miss Mapp wrinkled her face up into the sweetest and extremest smile of
which her mobile features were capable.

"Darling, you won't mind my telling you that just at this moment you are
being dummy," she said, "and so you mustn't speak a single word.
Otherwise there is no revoke, even if there was at all, which I
consider far from proved yet."

There was no further proof possible beyond the clear and final evidence
of the cards, and since everybody, including Miss Mapp herself, was
perfectly well aware that she had re