Diva gave up. She knew she was no match for her and had more tea.

‘About our own affairs then,’ she said, ‘if that’s all settled –’

‘Yes, dear: so sweetly so harmoniously,’ said Elizabeth.

Diva swallowed a regurgitation of resentment, and went on as if she had not been interrupted.

‘– Mrs Lucas takes possession on the first of August,’ she said. ‘That’s to say, you would like to get into Wasters that day.’

‘Early that day, Diva, if you can manage it,’ said Elizabeth, ‘as I want to give my servants time to clean and tidy up. I would pop across in the morning, and my servants follow later. All so easy to manage.’

‘Then there’s another thing,’ said Diva. ‘Garden-produce. You’re leaving yours, I suppose.’

Miss Mapp gave a little trill of laughter.

‘I shan’t be digging up all my potatoes and stripping the beans and the fruit trees,’ she said. ‘And I thought – correct me if I am wrong – that my eight guineas a week for your little house included garden-produce, which is all that really concerns you and me. I think we agreed as to that.’

Miss Mapp leaned forward with an air of imparting luscious secret information, as that was settled.

‘Diva: something thrilling,’ she said. ‘I happened to be glancing out of my window just by chance a few minutes before I waved to you, and there were Mrs Lucas and Mr Pillson peering, positively peering into the windows of Mallards Cottage. I couldn’t help wondering if Mr Pillson is thinking of taking it. They seemed to be so absorbed in it. It is to let, for Isabel Poppit has taken that little brown bungalow with no proper plumbing out by the golf links.’

‘Thrilling!’ said Diva. ‘There’s a door in the paling between that little backyard at Mallards Cottage and your garden. They could unlock it –’

She stopped, for this was a development of the trend of ideas for which neither of them had apologised.

‘But even if Mr Pillson is thinking of taking it, what next, Elizabeth?’ she asked.

Miss Mapp bent to kiss the roses in that beautiful vase of flowers which she had cut this morning in preparation for Lucia’s visit.

‘Nothing particular, dear,’ she said. ‘Just one of my madcap notions. You and I might take Mallards Cottage between us, if it appealed to you. Sweet Isabel is only asking four guineas a week for it. If Mr Pillson happens – it’s only a speculation – to want it, we might ask, say, six. So cheap at six.’

Diva rose.

‘Shan’t touch it,’ she said. ‘What if Mr Pillson doesn’t want it? A pure speculation.’

‘Perhaps it would be rather risky,’ said Miss Mapp. ‘And now I come to think of it, possibly, possibly rather stealing a march – don’t they call it – on my friends.’