‘That fits in perfectly,’ said Lucia. ‘I called to Georgie out of the window here, and we told each other that our pictures had been rejected. A moment later, I saw your car go down to the High Street and when I went down there soon afterwards, it was standing in front of Miss – I mean Elizabeth’s house. Clearly what happened was that the framer misunderstood Georgie’s instructions, and returned the pictures to us before the hanging committee sat at all. So you never saw them, and we imagined all the time – did we not, Georgie? – that you had simply sent them back.’

‘But what must you have thought of us?’ said Mr Wyse, with a gesture of despair.

‘Why, that you did not conscientiously think very much of our art,’ said Lucia. ‘We were perfectly satisfied with your decision. I felt sure that my little picture had a hundred faults and feeblenesses.’

Miss Mapp had become unpetrified. Could it be that by some miraculous oversight she had not put into those parcels the formal, typewritten rejection of the committee? It did not seem likely, for she had a very vivid remembrance of the gratification it gave her to do so, but the only alternative theory was to suppose a magnanimity on Lucia’s part which seemed even more miraculous. She burst into speech.

‘How we all congratulate ourselves,’ she cried, ‘that it has all been cleared up! Such a stupid errand boy! What are we to do next, Mr Wyse? Our exhibition must secure Lucia’s sweet picture, and of course Mr Pillson’s too. But how are we to find room for them? Everything is hung.’

‘Nothing easier,’ said Mr Wyse. ‘I shall instantly withdraw my paltry little piece of still life, and I am sure that Susan –’

‘No, that would never do,’ said Miss Mapp, currying favour all round. ‘That beautiful wallflower, I could almost smell it: that King of Italy. Mine shall go: two or three of mine. I insist on it.’

Mr Wyse bowed to Lucia and then to Georgie.

‘I have a plan better yet,’ he said. ‘Let us put – if we may have the privilege of securing what was so nearly lost to our exhibition – let us put these two pictures on easels as showing how deeply we appreciate our good fortune in getting them.’

He bowed to his wife, he bowed – was it quite a bow? – to Miss Mapp, and had there been a mirror, he would no doubt have bowed to himself.

‘Besides,’ he said, ‘our little sketches will not thus suffer so much from their proximity to –’ and he bowed to Lucia. ‘And if Mr Pillson will similarly allow us –’ he bowed to Georgie.