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Rh “No, dear Major,” she said. “There’s no champagne in it. It’s my Grandmamma Mapp’s famous red-currant fool, with little additions perhaps by me. No champagne: yolk of egg and a little cream. Dear Isabel has got it very nearly right.”

The Padre had promised to take more tricks in diamonds than he had the slightest chance of doing. His mental worry communicated itself to his voice.

“And why should there be nary a wee drappie o’ champagne in it?” he said, “though your Grandmamma Mapp did invent it. Weel, let’s see your hand, partner. Eh, that’s a sair sight.”

“And there’ll be a sair wee score agin us when ye’re through with the playin’ o’ it,” said Irene, in tones that could not be acquitted of a mocking intent. “Why the hell&#8203;—&#8203;hallelujah did you go on when I didn’t support you?”

Even that one glass of red-currant fool, though there was no champagne in it, had produced, together with the certainty that her opponent had overbidden his hand, a pleasant exhilaration in Miss Mapp; but yolk of egg, as everybody knew, was a strong stimulant. Suddenly the name red-currant fool seemed very amusing to her.

“Red-currant fool!” she said. “What a quaint, old-fashioned name! I shall invent some others. I shall tell my cook to make some gooseberry-idiot, or strawberry-donkey…. My play, I think. A ducky little ace of spades.”

“Haw! haw! gooseberry idiot!” said her partner. “Capital! You won’t beat that in a hurry! And a two of spades on the top of it.”

“You wouldn’t expect to find a two of spades at the bottom of it,” said the Padre with singular acidity.