The Spawer told him that he was afraid ... it had n't been doing much. To tell the truth (that candid truth at which the Spawer was becoming such an adept), the weather had corrupted him. First of all it had been too fine ... and then it had been too wet. This rain had unsettled him. It had washed out all his inspiration. He 'd only felt inclined to stick his fingers in his pockets and shiver over fires. The keys were too cold and damp. There was no warmth about them.
His Reverence gathered the cloth, and spread it over the table. "Indeed? I suppose you 've not seen much of Pamela ... since I left?" he asked casually.
The Spawer's heart hit him under the chin.
"Pam?" he replied, as though for the moment nothing had been further than this girl from his thoughts. "Very little. Let 's see. One ... no, twice, I believe. Yes; twice to speak to since you 've been away."
"Ha!" said his Reverence, and smoothed the cloth scrupulously down all its creases and over the corners of the table.
What did that oracular "Ha!" mean? Did it mean that his Reverence knew the whole history of those two times—or suspected it? ... or knew nothing; suspected nothing? There are moments when an ambiguous monosyllable is more potent than the wisest of words—and this was one of them. The Spawer waited a little space, while his Reverence passed his smooth palm backwards and forwards over the snowy surface, in the hopes that he might add something to that unexplanatory "Ha!" But his Reverence said nothing. He might have been waiting too.
"I 've heard, though..." the Spawer began, feeling the discomfort of that monosyllable like a drop of cold water down his neck, and stopped there suggestively.
"Ha!" His Reverence passed a concluding hand over the table-cloth, and straightened himself with puckered mouth and portentous brows. "... Unfortunately true. Unfortunately true. Yes."
"Unfortunately" true! The Vicar, then, was his ally.
"... At first," he said, professing suddenly that the destiny of two drops, trickling slowly towards each other on the window-pane, was of more moment to him than the matter of the girl, "... at first ... I hardly believed it. I suppose, though ... you say there 's no mistake."