They moved on sideways like crabs.
'A little hall,' said Lucia. 'Pretty staircase going up out of it.'
More crab-like movements.
'The sitting-room,' said Georgie. 'Quite charming, and if you press your nose close you can see out of the other window into a tiny garden beyond. The wooden paling must be that of your kitchen garden.'
They stepped back into the street to get a better idea of the topography, and at this moment Miss Mapp looked out of the bow-window of her garden-room and saw them there. She was as intensely interested in this as they in the house.
'And three bedrooms I should think upstairs,' said Lucia, 'and two attics above. Heaps.'
'I shall go and see the agent tomorrow morning,' said Georgie. 'I can imagine myself being very comfortable there!'
They strolled off into the disused graveyard round the church. Lucia turned to have one more look at the front of Mallards, and Miss Mapp made a low swift curtsey, remaining down so that she disappeared completely.
'About that old fête,' said Georgie, 'I don't want to throw Daisy over, because she'll never get another Drake.'
'But you can go down there for the week,' said Lucia who had thought it all out, 'and come back as soon as it's over. You know how to be knighted by now. You needn't go to all those endless rehearsals. Georgie, look at that wonderful clock on the church.'
'Lovely,' said Georgie absently. 'I told Daisy I simply would not be knighted every day. I shall have no shoulder left.'
'And I think that must be the Town Hall,' said Lucia. 'Quite right about not being knighted so often. What a perfect sketch you could do of that.'
'Heaps of room for us all in the cottage,' said Georgie. 'I hope there's a servants' sitting-room.'
'They'll be in and out of Mallards all day,' said Lucia. 'A lovely servants' hall there.'
'If I can get it, I will,' said Georgie. 'I shall try to let my house at Riseholme, though I shall take my bibelots away. I've often had applications for it in other years. I hope Foljambe will like Tilling. She will make me miserable if she doesn't. Tepid water, fluff on my clothes.'
It was time to get back to their inn to unpack, but Georgie longed for one more look at his cottage, and Lucia for one at Mallards. Just as they turned the corner that brought them in sight of these there was thrust out of the window of Miss Mapp's garden-room a hand that waved a white handkerchief. It might have been samite.
'Georgie, what can that be?' whispered Lucia. 'It must be a signal of some sort. Or was it Miss Mapp waving us good-night?'
'Not very likely,' said he. 'Let's wait one second.'
He had hardly spoken when Miss Coles, followed by the breathless Mrs Plaistow hurried up the three steps leading to the front door of Mallards and entered.
'Diva and quaint Irene,' said Lucia. 'It must have been a signal.'
'It might be a coincidence,' said Georgie. To which puerile suggestion Lucia felt it was not worth while to reply.
Of course it was a signal and one long prearranged, for it was a matter of the deepest concern to several householders in Tilling, whether Miss Mapp found a tenant for Mallards, and she had promised Diva and quaint Irene to wave a handkerchief from the window of the garden-room at six o'clock precisely, by which hour it was reasonable to suppose that her visitors would have left her. These two ladies, who would be prowling about the street below, on the look-out, would then hasten to hear the best or the worst.
Their interest in the business was vivid, for if Miss Mapp succeeded in letting Mallards, she had promised to take Diva's house, Wasters, for two months at eight guineas a week (the house being much smaller) and Diva would take Irene's house, Taormina (smaller still) at five guineas a week, and Irene would take a four-roomed labourer's cottage (unnamed) just outside the town at two guineas a week, and the labourer, who, with his family would be harvesting in August and hop-picking in September, would live in some sort of shanty and pay no rent at all. Thus from top to bottom of this ladder of lessors and lessees they all scored, for they all received more than they paid, and all would enjoy the benefit of a change without the worry and expense of travel and hotels. Each of these ladies would wake in the morning in an unfamiliar room, would sit in unaccustomed chairs, read each other's books (and possibly letters), look at each other's pictures, imbibe all the stimulus of new surroundings, without the wrench of leaving Tilling at all. No true Tillingite was ever really happy away from her town; foreigners were very queer untrustworthy people, and if you did not like the food it was impossible to engage another cook for an hotel of which you were not the proprietor. Annually in the summer this sort of ladder of house-letting was set up in Tilling and was justly popular. But it all depended on a successful letting of Mallards, for if Elizabeth Mapp did not let Mallards, she would not take Diva's Wasters nor Diva Irene's Taormina.
Diva and Irene therefore hurried to the garden-room where they would hear their fate; Irene forging on ahead with that long masculine stride that easily kept pace with Major Benjy's, the short-legged Diva with that twinkle of feet that was like the scudding of a thrush over the lawn.
'Well, Mapp, what luck?' asked Irene.
Miss Mapp waited till Diva had shot in.
'I think I shall tease you both,' said she playfully with her widest smile.
'Oh, hurry up,' said Irene. 'I know perfectly well from your face that you've let it. Otherwise it would be all screwed up.'
Miss Mapp, though there was no question about her being the social queen of Tilling, sometimes felt that there were ugly Bolshevistic symptoms in the air, when quaint Irene spoke to her like that. And Irene had a dreadful gift of mimicry, which was a very low weapon, but formidable. It was always wise to be polite to mimics.
'Patience, a little patience, dear,' said Miss Mapp soothingly. 'If you know I've let it, why wait?'
'Because I should like a cocktail,' said Irene. 'If you'll just send for one, you can go on teasing.'
'Well, I've let it for August and September,' said Miss Mapp, preferring to abandon her teasing than give Irene a cocktail. 'And I'm lucky in my tenant. I never met a sweeter woman than dear Mrs Lucas.'
'Thank God,' said Diva, drawing up her chair to the still uncleared table. 'Give me a cup of tea, Elizabeth. I could eat nothing till I knew.'
'How much did you stick her for it?' asked Irene.
'Beg your pardon, dear?' asked Miss Mapp, who could not be expected to understand such a vulgar expression.
'What price did you screw her up to? What's she got to pay you?' said Irene impatiently. 'Damage: dibs.'
'She instantly closed with the price I suggested,' said Miss Mapp. 'I'm not sure, quaint one, that anything beyond that is what might be called your business.'
'I disagree about that,' said the quaint one. 'There ought to be a sliding-scale. If you've made her pay through the nose, Diva ought to make you pay through the nose for her house, and I ought to make her pay through the nose for mine. Equality, Fraternity, Nosality.'
Miss Mapp bubbled with disarming laughter and rang the bell for Irene's cocktail, which might
