ay could
be of the smallest interest to him; whereas he had spent an almost
sleepless night in wondering whether it would, in certain circumstances,
be proper to make a bow at the beginning of his sermon and another at
the end; whether he ought to meet the visitor at the west door; whether
the mayor ought to be told, and whether there ought to be special
psalms....

"Well, lady fair," he said. "Gossip will have it that ye Prince of Wales
is staying at Ardingly for the Sunday; indeed, he will, I suppose, pass
through Tilling on Saturday afternoon----"

Miss Mapp put her forefinger to her forehead, as if trying to recollect
something.

"Yes, now somebody did tell me that," she said. "Major Flint, I believe.
But when you asked for news I thought you meant something that really
interested me. Yes, Padre?"

"Aweel, if he comes to service on Sunday----?"

"Dear Padre, I'm sure he'll hear a very good sermon. Oh, I see what you
mean! Whether you ought to have any special hymn? Don't ask poor little
me! Mrs. Poppit, I'm sure, would tell you. She knows all about courts
and etiquette."

Diva popped out of the stationer's at this moment.

"Sold out," she announced. "Everybody wanted time-tables this morning.
Evie got the last. Have to go to the station."

"I'll walk with you, Diva, dear," said Miss Mapp. "There's a parcel
that---- Good-bye, dear Evie, au reservoir."

She kissed her hand to Mrs. Bartlett, leaving a smile behind it, as it
fluttered away from her face, for the Padre.

Miss Mapp was so impenetrably wrapped in thought as she worked among her
sweet flowers that afternoon, that she merely stared at a
"love-in-a-mist," which she had absently rooted up instead of a piece of
groundsel, without any bleeding of the heart for one of her sweet
flowers. There were two trains by which He might arrive--one at 4.15,
which would get him to Ardingly for tea, the other at 6.45. She was
quite determined to see him, but more inflexible than that resolve was
the Euclidean postulate that no one in Tilling should think that she had
taken any deliberate step to do so. For the present she had disarmed
suspicion by the blankness of her indifference as to what might happen
on Saturday or Sunday; but she herself strongly suspected that everybody
else, in spite of the public attitude of Tilling to such subjects, was
determined to see him too. How to see and not be seen was the question
which engrossed her, and though she might possib