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the walls, and above them hung many water-colour sketches of the sort that proclaims a domesticorigin. Their subjects also betrayed them, for there was one of the front of Miss Mapp’s house, and one of the secret garden, another of the crooked chimney, and several of the church tower looking over the house-roofs on to Miss Mapp’s lawn.
    Though she continued to spray on her visitors a perpetual shower of flattering and agreeable trifles, Miss Mapp’s inner attention was wrestling with the problem of how much a week, when it came to the delicate question of terms for the rent of her house, she should ask Lucia. The price had not been mentioned in her advertisement in
The Times
, and though she had told the local house-agent to name twelve guineas a week, Lucia was clearly more than delighted with what she had seen already, and it would be a senseless Quixotism to let her have the house for twelve, if she might, all the time, be willing to pay fifteen. Moreover, Miss Mapp (from behind the curtain where Georgie had seen her) was aware that Lucia had a Rolls-Royce car, so that a few additional guineas a week would probably be of no significance to her. Of course, if Lucia was not enthusiastic about the house as well as the garden, it might be unwise to ask fifteen, for she might think that a good deal, and would say something tiresome about letting Miss Mapp hear from her when she got safe away back to Riseholme, and then it was sure to be a refusal. But if she continued to rave and talk Italian about the house when she saw over it, fifteen guineas should be the price. And not a penny of that should Messrs Woolgar & Pipstow, the house-agents, get for commission, since Lucia had said definitely that she saw the advertisement in
The Times
. That was Miss Mapp’s affair: nothing to do with Woolgar & Pipstow. Meantime she begged Georgie not to look at those water-colours on the walls.
    ‘Little daubs of my own,’ she said, most anxious that this should be known. ‘I should sink into the ground with shame, dear Mr Pillson, if you looked at them, for I know what a great artist you are yourself. And Withers has brought us our tea … You like the one of my little
giardino segreto?
(I must remember that beautiful phrase.) How kind of you to say so! Perhaps it isn’t quite so bad as the others, for the subject inspired me,and it’s so important, isn’t it, to love your subject? Major Benjy likes it too. Cream, Mrs Lucas? I see Withers has picked some strawberries for us from my little plot. Such a year for strawberries! And Major Benjy was chatting with friends I’ll be bound, when you passed him.’
    ‘Yes, a clergyman,’ said Lucia, ‘who kindly directed us to your house. In fact he seemed to know we were going there before I said so, didn’t he, Georgie? A broad Scotch accent.’
    ‘Dear Padre!’ said Miss Mapp. ‘It’s one of his little ways to talk Scotch, though he came from Birmingham. A very good bridge-player when he can spare time as he usually can. Reverend Kenneth Bartlett. Was there a teeny little thin woman with him like a mouse? It would be his wife.’
    ‘No, not thin, at all,’ said Lucia thoroughly interested. ‘Quite the other way round: in fact round. A purple coat and a skirt covered with pink roses that looked as if they were made of chintz.’
    Miss Mapp nearly choked over her first sip of tea, but just saved herself.
    ‘I declare I’m quite frightened of you, Mrs Lucas,’ she said. ‘What an eye you’ve got. Dear Diva Plaistow, whom we’re all devoted to. Christened Godiva! Such a handicap! And they
were
chintz roses, which she cut out of an old pair of curtains and tacked them on. She’s full of absurd delicious fancies like that. Keeps us all in fits of laughter. Anyone else?’
    ‘Yes, a girl with no hat and an Eton crop. She was dressed in a fisherman’s jersey and knickerbockers.’
    Miss Mapp looked pensive.
    ‘Quaint Irene,’ she said. ‘Irene Coles. Just a touch of