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38 “Which of you beat? Or should I say ‘won!’” she asked.

Major Flint’s long moustache was dripping with Lager beer, and he made a dexterous, sucking movement.

“Well, the Army and the Navy had it out,” he said. “And if for once Britain’s Navy was not invincible, eh, Puffin?”

Captain Puffin limped away pretending not to hear, and took his heaped plate and brimming glass in the direction of Irene.

“But I’m sure Captain Puffin played quite beautifully too,” said Miss Mapp in the vain attempt to detain him. She liked to collect all the men round her, and then scold them for not talking to the other ladies.

“Well, a game’s a game,” said the Major. “It gets through the hours, Miss Mapp. Yes: we finished at the fourteenth hole, and hurried back to more congenial society. And what have you done to-day? Fairy-errands, I'll be bound. Titania! Ha!”

Suet errands and errands about a missing article of underclothing were really the most important things that Miss Mapp had done to-day, now that her bridge-party scheme had so miscarried, but naturally she would not allude to these.

“A little gardening,” she said. “A little sketching. A little singing. Not time to change my frock and put on something less shabby. But I wouldn’t have kept sweet Isabel’s bridge-party waiting for anything, and so I came straight from my painting here. Padre, I’ve been trying to draw the lovely south porch. But so difficult! I shall give up trying to draw, and just enjoy myself with looking. And there’s your dear Evie! How de do, Evie love?”