Fifteen
IM iss Marple passed out through the french windows of her drawing room, tripped down her neat garden path,through a garden gate, in through the vicarage garden gate, across the vicarage garden, and up to the drawing roomwindow, where she tapped gently on the pane².
The vicar was busy in his study composing his Sunday sermon, but the vicar’s wife, who was young and pretty,was admiring the progress of her offspring across the hearthrug.
“Can I come in, Griselda?”
“Oh, do, Miss Marple. Just look at David! He gets so angry because he can only crawl in reverse. He wants to getto something and the more he tries the more he goes backwards³ into the coal box!”
“He’s looking very bonny, Griselda.”
“He’s not bad, is he?” said the young mother, endeavouring to assume an indifferent manner. “Of course I don’tbother with him much. All the books say a child should be left alone as much as possible.”
“Very wise, dear,” said Miss Marple. “Ahem, I came to ask if there was anything special you are collecting for atthe 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 Nave⁴ Restoration Fund, and St. Giles’s Mission, and our Sale of Work next Wednesday, and theUnmarried Mothers, and a Boy Scouts’ Outing, and the Needlework Guild⁵, and the Bishop’s Appeal for Deep SeaFishermen.”
“Any of them will do,” said Miss Marple. “I thought I might make a little round—with a book, you know—if youwould authorize⁶ 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 belovely to get some real money instead of those awful sachets and comic pen-wipers and depressing children’s frocksand 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 allabout?”

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