Fifteen

I
Miss Marple passed out through the french windows of her drawing room,tripped down her neat garden path, through a garden gate, in through thevicarage garden gate, across the vicarage garden, and up to the drawingroom window, where she tapped gently on the pane.

The vicar was busy in his study composing his Sunday sermon, but thevicar’s wife, who was young and pretty, was admiring the progress of heroffspring across the hearthrug.

“Can I come in, Griselda?”

“Oh, do, Miss Marple. Just look at David! He gets so angry because he canonly crawl in reverse. He wants to get to something and the more he triesthe more he goes backwards into the coal box!”

“He’s looking very bonny, Griselda.”

“He’s not bad, is he?” said the young mother, endeavouring to assumean indifferent manner. “Of course I don’t bother with him much. All thebooks say a child should be left alone as much as possible.”

“Very wise, dear,” said Miss Marple. “Ahem, I came to ask if there wasanything special you are collecting for at the moment.”

The vicar’s wife turned somewhat astonished eyes upon her.

“Oh, heaps of things,” she said cheerfully. “There always are.”

She ticked them off on her fingers.

“There’s the Nave Restoration Fund, and St. Giles’s Mission, and our Saleof Work next Wednesday, and the Unmarried Mothers, and a Boy Scouts’

Outing, and the Needlework Guild, and the Bishop’s Appeal for Deep SeaFishermen.”

“Any of them will do,” said Miss Marple. “I thought I might make a littleround—with a book, you know—if you would authorize me to do so.”

“Are you up to something? I believe you are. Of course I authorize you.

Make it the Sale of Work; it would be lovely to get some real money in-stead of those awful sachets and comic pen-wipers and depressing chil-dren’s frocks and dusters all done up to look like dolls.

“I suppose,” continued Griselda, accompanying her guest to the window,“you wouldn’t like to tell me what it’s all about?”

“Later, my dear,” said Miss Marple, hurrying off.

With a sigh the young mother returned to the hearthrug and, by way ofcarrying out her principles of stern neglect, butted her son three times inthe stomach so that he caught hold of her hair and pulled it with gleefulyells. Then they rolled over and over in a grand rough-and-tumble untilthe door opened and the vicarage maid announced to the most influentialparishioner (who didn’t like children):

“Missus is in here.”

Whereupon Griselda sat up and tried to look dignified and more what avicar’s wife should be