McCLELLAND & STEWART, LTD.,
TORONTO
I lingered at the window of the garden-room from which Miss Mapp sooften and so ominously looked forth. To the left was the front of herhouse, straight ahead the steep cobbled way, with a glimpse of the HighStreet at the end, to the right the crooked chimney and the church.
The street was populous with passengers, but search as I might, I couldsee none who ever so remotely resembled the objects of her vigilance.
E. F. Benson.
Lamb House, Rye.
Printed in Great Britain.
Miss Elizabeth Mapp might have been forty, and she had taken advantageof this opportunity by being just a year or two older. Her face was ofhigh vivid colour and was corrugated by chronic rage and curiosity; butthese vivifying emotions had preserved to her an astonishing activity ofmind and body, which fully accounted for the comparative adolescencewith which she would have been credited anywhere except in the charminglittle town which she had inhabited so long. Anger and the gravestsuspicions about everybody had kept her young and on the boil.
She sat, on this hot July morning, like a large bird of prey at the veryconvenient window of her garden-room, the ample bow of which formed astrategical point of high value