midnight
He could talk , when permitted , by the hour about the reclamation from the sea of the marsh land south of the town , and about the old Roman road which was built on a raised causeway , of which traces remained ; but it argued , so thought Miss Mapp , an unprecedented egoism on the part of Major Flint , and an equally unprecedented love of antiquities on the part of Captain Puffin , that they should prosecute their studies -LRB- with gas at the present price -RRB- till such hours . No ; Miss Mapp knew better than that , but she had not made up her mind exactly what it was that she knew . She mentally rejected the idea that egoism -LRB- even in these days of diaries and autobiographies -RRB- and antiquities accounted for so much study , with the same healthy intolerance with which a vigorous stomach rejects unwholesome food , and did not allow herself to be insidiously poisoned by its retention . But as she took up her light aluminium opera-glasses to make sure whether it was Isabel Poppit or not who was now stepping with that high , prancing tread into the stationer 's in the High Street , she exclaimed to herself , for the three hundred and sixty-fifth time after breakfast : `` It 's very baffling '' ; for it was precisely a year to-day since she had first seen those mysterious midnight squares of illuminated blind . `` Baffling , '' in fact , was a word that constantly made short appearances in Miss Mapp 's vocabulary , though its retention for a whole year over one subject was unprecedented . But never yet had `` baffled '' sullied her wells of pure undefiled English . Movement had begun ; Mrs. Plaistow , carrying her wicker basket , came round the corner by the church , in the direction of Miss Mapp 's window , and as there was a temporary coolness between them -LRB- following violent heat -RRB- with regard to some worsted of brilliant rose-madder hue , which a forgetful draper had sold to Mrs. Plaistow , having definitely promised it to Miss Mapp ... but Miss Mapp 's large-mindedness scorned to recall the sordid details of this paltry appropriation .