‘If I can get it, I will,’ said Georgie. ‘I shall try to let my house at Riseholme, though I shall take my bibelots away. I’ve often had applications for it in other years. I hope Foljambe will like Tilling. She will make me miserable if she doesn’t. Tepid water, fluff on my clothes.’

It was time to get back to their inn to unpack, but Georgie longed for one more look at his cottage, and Lucia for one at Mallards. Just as they turned the corner that brought them in sight of these there was thrust out of the window of Miss Mapp’s garden-room a hand that waved a white handkerchief. It might have been samite.

‘Georgie, what can that be?’ whispered Lucia. ‘It must be a signal of some sort. Or was it Miss Mapp waving us good night?’

‘Not very likely,’ said he. ‘Let’s wait one second.’

He had hardly spoken when Miss Coles, followed by the breathless Mrs Plaistow, hurried up the three steps leading to the front door of Mallards and entered.

‘Diva and quaint Irene,’ said Lucia. ‘It must have been a signal.’

‘It might be a coincidence,’ said Georgie. To which puerile suggestion Lucia felt it was not worth while to reply.

Of course it was a signal and one long prearranged, for it was a matter of the deepest concern to several householders in Tilling, whether Miss Mapp found a tenant for Mallards, and she had promised Diva and quaint Irene to wave a handkerchief from the window of the garden-room at six o’clock precisely, by which hour it was reasonable to suppose that her visitors would have left her. These two ladies, who would be prowling about the street below, on the look-out, would then hasten to hear the best or the worst.