"I don't care what it is," said the Spawer, "so long as it 's nothing catching. Tell me it 's not smallpox and I 'm with you."
"Oh, it is n't smallpox," Pam reassured him. "It 's only poor old Mr. Smethurst."
"Come," said the Spawer, relieved, "that does n't sound so alarming. I 'll risk it. And are the bottles his or ours?"
"His," said Pam, as the Spawer disengaged her of them, and they commenced to walk forward together. "Poor old gentleman. There 's a lemon jelly and a bottle of port and a bottle of whiskey. Those are from Father Mostyn—the very same that he drinks himself." Her eyes kindled luminously at the mention. "Is n't it good of him? Nobody knows but me what lots of things he gives away ... and what lots of things he does for people. He 'd do anything for anybody. They don't understand him in Ullbrig a bit. I did n't always, but I do now. They talk about his house, and say it wants painting. And of course it does. And they say he 's a Roman Catholic, and gets paid by the Pope for every conversion he makes; but that 's not true. He 's nothing at all to do with the Pope. And then they laugh at him because he goes down on his knees in church, but as he said one day to Mr. Stevens (Sheppardman): 'You touch your hat to me because I 'm his reverence the vicar, but you 're too proud to bow to the Lord Jesus.' And it 's not a matter of what he does in church. They ought n't to go by that—and they can't truthfully, because they 're never there to see. It's what he does in Ullbrig. If anybody 's ill, it 's always him they send for, and he always goes, whether it 's by night or day. When they 're well he talks about their hypocrisy and their sinfulness, and about their pride—you 've heard him, have n't you? But when they 're ill ... oh, you would n't know him. He 's as gentle as a woman. He looks at their medicine, and feels their pulse, and smooths their pillow; and oh, he talks so beautifully. When little Annie Summers died of diphtheria he sat up all the night after the operation, keeping her throat clear with a feather (that was very dangerous, of course, and he might have died of it), and when she was dead her father told him: 'I 've never given you a good word all my days, Mr. Mostyn,' and Father Mostyn only shook his head and told him: 'Well, well, John, give it me now.' And when poor old James Marshall was dying they sent for Father Mostyn, of course, and James told him he was a bit fearsome he had n't done the right thing in spending so much of his time at chapel. And Father Mostyn said: 'Make your mind easy, James, there are no churches or chapels up there.' Old Mr. Smethurst used to go to chapel, too, when he was well enough to go anywhere, but as Father Mostyn says, we can't help that. The wine will do him as much good as if he had been to church. And it was a long time ago. He 'll never go there any more."
"Is he so ill as that?" asked the Spawer.
"He 's dying," said Pam.
The little tremor of her lip, and the sudden moistness about her eyes—though he had witnessed these wonderful manifestations of her tender nature before on many an occasion—went to the Spawer's heart in the present instance like an arrow. Pam's tears were in everybody's service. Not idle tears, but tears that seemed the sacred seal of noble self-sacrifice and devotion.
And to think he was so soon going to remove himself from the soft-dropping springs of their sympathy.
"What a ministering angel you are," he said, looking at her lightly enough, and yet—though Pam could not know that—with a kind of tightness about the throat.
"I 'm afraid I 'm not an angel," the girl regretted. "Not a bit of one. I wish I were."