At a quarter before twelve the boy arrived at Mallards and rang the bell. Grosvenor took down the chain and received from him a thin square parcel labelled ‘With care’. One minute afterwards he delivered a similar parcel to Foljambe at Mallards Cottage, and had discharged Miss Mapp’s further errand. The two maids conveyed these to their employers, and Georgie and Lucia, tearing off the wrappers, found themselves simultaneously confronted with their own pictures. A typewritten slip accompanied each, conveying to them the cordial thanks of the hanging committee and its regrets that the limited wall-space at its disposal would not permit of these works of art being exhibited.

Georgie ran out into his little yard and looked over the paling of Lucia’s garden. At the same moment Lucia threw open the window of the garden-room which faced towards the paling.

‘Georgie, have you received –’ she called.

‘Yes,’ said Georgie.

‘So have I.’

‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.

Lucia’s face assumed an expression eager and pensive, the faraway look with which she listened to Beethoven. She thought intently for a moment.

‘I shall take a season ticket for the exhibition,’ she said, ‘and constantly –’

‘I can’t quite hear you,’ said Georgie.

Lucia raised her voice.

‘I shall buy a season ticket for the exhibition,’ she shouted, ‘and go there every day. Believe me, that’s the only way to take it. They don’t want our pictures, but we mustn’t be small about it. Dignity, Georgie.’

There was nothing to add to so sublime a declaration and Lucia went across to the bow window, looking down the street. At that moment the Wyses’ Royce lurched out of Porpoise Street, and turned down towards the High Street. Lucia knew they were both on the hanging committee which had just rejected one of her own most successful sketches (for the crooked chimney had turned out beautifully), but she felt not the smallest resentment towards them. No doubt they had acted quite conscientiously and she waved her hand in answer to a flutter of sables from the interior of the car. Presently she went down herself to the High Street to hear the news of the morning, and there was the Wyses’ car drawn up in front of Wasters. She remembered then that the hanging committee met this morning, and a suspicion, too awful to be credible, flashed through her mind. But she thrust it out, as being unworthy of entertainment by a clean mind. She did her shopping and on her return took down a pale straw-coloured sketch by Miss Mapp that hung in the garden-room, and put in its place her picture of Mallards Cottage and the crooked chimney. Then she called to mind that powerful platitude, and said to herself that time would show…