Free Lucia Victrix by E. F. Benson Page B

‘I should hate to think that Mrs Lucas should get her ideas of the society she will meet in Tilling from poor common Susan. Probably they would like a little lunch before their long drive back to Riseholme.’
    The inspection of the cottage had taken very little time. The main point in Georgie’s mind was that Foljambe should be pleased, and there was an excellent bedroom for Foljambe,where she could sit when unoccupied. The rooms that concerned him had been viewed through the windows from the street the evening before. Consequently Miss Mapp had hardly had time to put on her garden-hat, and trip up the street with Diva, when the inspecting party came out.
    ‘Sweet Susan!’ she said. ‘I saw your car go by … Dear Mrs Lucas, good morning, I just popped across this is Mrs Plaistow – to see if you would not come and have an early lunch with me before you drive back to your lovely Riseholme. Any time would suit me, for I never have any breakfast. Twelve, half-past twelve? A little something?’
    ‘So kind of you,’ said Lucia, ‘but Mrs Wyse has just asked us to lunch with her.’
    ‘I see,’ said Miss Mapp, grinning frightfully. ‘Such a pity. I had hoped – but there it is.’
    Clearly it was incumbent on sweet Susan to ask her to join them at this early lunch, but sweet Susan showed no signs of doing anything of the sort. Off went Lucia and Georgie to the Trader’s Arms to pack their belongings and leave the rest of the morning free, and the Wyses, after vainly trying to persuade them to drive there in the Royce, got into it themselves and backed down the street till it could turn in the slightly wider space opposite Miss Mapp’s garden-room. This took a long time, and she was not able to get to her own front door till the manoeuvre was executed, for as often as she tried to get round the front of the car it took a short run forward, and it threatened to squash her flat against the wall of her own room if she tried to squeeze round behind it.
    But there were topics to gloat over which consoled her for this act of social piracy on the part of the Wyses. It was a noble stroke to have let Mallards for fifteen guineas a week without garden-produce, and an equally brilliant act to have got Diva’s house for eight with garden-produce, for Diva had some remarkably fine plum-trees, the fruit of which would be ripe during her tenancy, not to mention apples: Miss Mapp foresaw a kitchen-cupboard the doors of which could not close because of the jam-pots within. Such reflections made a happy mental background as she hurried out into the town, for there werebusinesses to be transacted without delay. She first went to the house-agents’ and had rather a job to convince Mr Woolgar that the letting of Mallards was due to her own advertisement in
The Times
, and that therefore she owed no commission to his firm, but her logic proved irresistible. Heated but refreshed by that encounter, she paid a visit to her greengrocer and made a pleasant arrangement for the sale of the produce of her own kitchen-garden at Mallards during the months of August and September. This errand brought her to the east end of the High Street, and there was Georgie already established on the belvedere busy sketching the Landgate, before he went to breakfast (as those Wyses always called lunch) in Porpoise Street. Miss Mapp did not yet know whether he had taken Mallards Cottage or not, and that must be instantly ascertained.
    She leaned on the railing close beside him, and moved a little, rustled a little, till he looked up.
    ‘Oh, Mr Pillson, how ashamed of myself I am!’ she said. ‘But I couldn’t help taking a peep at your lovely little sketch. So rude of me: just like an inquisitive stranger in the street. Never meant to interrupt you, but to steal away again when I’d had my peep. Every moment’s precious to you, I know, as you’re off this afternoon after your early lunch. But I must ask you whether your hotel was comfortable. I should