She kissed her hand to Georgie and turned back into the room. Miss Mapp was still there, but now invisible to Lucia’s eye. She hummed a gay bar of Mozartino, and went back to her table in the bow window where she tore up the letter of resignation and recommendation she had written to the Padre, and the half-finished note to Miss Mapp, which so cordially asked her to dinner, saying that it was so long since they had met, for they had met again now. When she looked up she was alone, and there was Georgie tripping up the steps by the front door. Though it was standing open (for the ironmonger was already engaged on the firm restoration of the chain) he very properly rang the bell and was admitted.

‘There you are,’ said Lucia brightly as he came in. ‘Another lovely day.’

‘Perfect. What has happened to your front door?’

Lucia laughed.

‘Elizabeth came to see me,’ she said gaily. ‘The chain was on the door, as I have ordered it always shall be. But she gave the door such a biff that the hasp pulled out. It’s being repaired.’

‘No!’ said Georgie, ‘and did you give her what for?’

‘She had several things she wanted to see me about,’ said Lucia, keeping an intermittent eye on the front door. ‘She wanted to get out of her cupboards some stuff for the jumble sale she is getting up in aid of the hospital, and she is at it now under Grosvenor’s superintendence. Then she wanted me to send a sketch for the picture exhibition, I said I would be delighted. Then she said she could not manage to send any fruit for our fête here. She did not approve of the fête at all, Georgie. In fact, she forbade me to give it. We had a little chat about that.’

‘But what’s to be done then?’ asked Georgie.

‘Nothing that I know of, except to give the fête,’ said Lucia. ‘But it would be no use asking her to be on the committee for an object of which she disapproved, so I tore up the letter I had written to the Padre about it.’

Lucia suddenly focused her eyes and her attention on the front door, and a tone of warm human interest melted the deadly chill of her voice.

‘Georgie, there she goes,’ she said. ‘What a quantity of things! There’s an old kettle and a boot-jack, and a rug with a hole in it, and one stair-rod. And there’s a shaving from the front door where they are putting in bigger screws, stuck to her skirt… And she’s dropped the stair-rod… Major Benjy’s picking it up for her.’

Georgie hurried to the window to see these exciting happenings, but Miss Mapp, having recovered the stair-rod, was already disappearing.