ht be expected. Indeed, at this moment,
she quite distinctly heard that muffled roar which to her experienced
ear was easily interpreted to be "Qui-hi!"

"So the Major has just come down to breakfast," she mechanically
inferred, "and it's close on ten o'clock. Let me see: Tuesday, Thursday,
Saturday--Porridge morning."

Her penetrating glance shifted to the house exactly opposite to that in
which it was porridge morning, and even as she looked a hand was thrust
out of a small upper window and deposited a sponge on the sill. Then
from the inside the lower sash was thrust firmly down, so as to prevent
the sponge from blowing away and falling into the street. Captain
Puffin, it was therefore clear, was a little later than the Major that
morning. But he always shaved and brushed his teeth before his bath, so
that there was but a few minutes between them.

General manoeuvres in Tilling, the gradual burstings of fluttering life
from the chrysalis of the night, the emergence of the ladies of the town
with their wicker-baskets in their hands for housekeeping purchases, the
exodus of men to catch the 11.20 a.m. steam-tram out to the golf links,
and other first steps in the duties and diversions of the day, did not
get into full swing till half-past ten, and Miss Mapp had ample time to
skim the headlines of her paper and indulge in chaste meditations about
the occupants of these two houses, before she need really make herself
alert to miss nothing. Of the two, Major Flint, without doubt, was the
more attractive to the feminine sense; for years Miss Mapp had tried to
cajole him into marrying her, and had not nearly finished yet. With his
record of adventure, with the romantic reek of India (and camphor) in
the tiger-skin of the rugs that strewed his hall and surged like a
rising tide up the wall, with his haughty and gallant manner, with his
loud pshawings and sniffs at "nonsense and balderdash," his thumpings on
the table to emphasize an argument, with his wound and his prodigious
swipes at golf, his intolerance of any who believed in ghosts, microbes
or vegetarianism, there was something dashing and risky about him; you
felt that you were in the presence of some hot coal straight from the
furnace of creation. Captain Puffin, on the other hand, was of clay so
different that he could hardly be considered to be made of clay at all.
He was lame and short and meagre, with strings of peaceful beads and
Papuan aprons in his hall inst