"Ye look to me as though ye 'd been cryin'," she said. "'Ave ye?"
Pam pretended not to hear the question. Moreover, she was quite prepared to cry again at the slightest opportunity. Emma took her by the arm.
"You 're all of a shake," she said, and held the girl under scrutiny. "Pam lass," she said, and dropped her voice to a terrible whisper; "there 's nowt ... nowt wrong wi' ye? Ye 've not been gettin' into trouble?"
"Emma!"
Pam shook herself free of scrutiny with a burning face of repudiation.
"Thank goodness!" Emma said devoutly. "Bud it can 'appen soon enough to onny on ye." Emma testified freely at all times to the frailty of her sex, from which weakness, however, she dissociated herself, as a woman possessed of the superior lamp of wisdom and common-sense kept always burning. And indeed, it shone so conspicuously in her window that any bridegroom of burglarious intentions would have been singularly intrepid not to have been scared away by such a plain indication of this virgin's alertness. "Onnyway," Miss Morland decided, "... seummut 's come tiv ye beside a 'eadache. 'As 'e been sayin' owt tiv ye?"
"Who?"
"Either on 'em."
"How can you, Emma! ..."
"'Ave they?"