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94 Diva wasted no time, but rang the bell. She had to make certain.

“Janet,” she said, “go straight out into the High Street, and walk close behind Miss Mapp. Look very carefully at her dress; see if the poppies on it are of chintz.”

Janet’s face fell.

“Why, ma’am, she’s never gone and—” she began.

“Quick!” said Diva in a strangled voice.

Diva watched from her window. Janet went out, looked this way and that, spied the quarry, and skimmed up the High Street on feet that twinkled as fast as her mistress’s. She came back much out of breath with speed and indignation.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “They’re chintz sure enough. Tacked on, too, just as you were meaning to do. Oh, ma’am—”

Janet quite appreciated the magnitude of the calamity and her voice failed.

“What are we to do, ma’am?” she added.

Diva did not reply for a moment, but sat with eyes closed in profound and concentrated thought. It required no reflection to decide how impossible it was to appear herself to-morrow in a dress which seemed to ape the costume which all Tilling had seen Elizabeth wearing to-day, and at first it looked as if there was nothing to be done with all those laboriously acquired bunches of rosebuds; for it was clearly out of the question to use them as the decoration for any costume, and idle to think of sewing them back into the snipped and gashed curtains. She looked at the purple skirt and coat that hungered for their flowers, and then she looked at Janet. Janet was a short, roundabout person; it was ill-naturedly supposed that she had much the same figure as her mistress….