"But ye hae not explained ... so-and-so."
Or, "He may thank his guid stairs ye were there to hear-r-r! But hoo cam ye by the cliff at midnight?"
But as Pam would have told him freely anything about her body if illness had required it, and as she could trust him like Father Mostyn's second self, it would have been cruelly, distrustfully invidious to divide her carnal and spiritual confidences on this occasion with so fine a line; and since the Doctor felt no compunction in their acceptance, Pam felt quite tranquil in their bestowal. To these two men she told the history of her past few days, shielding everybody save herself; how she had come to love the Spawer, and how he had told her of his departure; and how she had wept on her bed; and how she had feared facing him that morning, lest she might weep betrayal of herself, and of a love she had no right to let him see, or trouble him with; and how, while she was trying to gain time for her terror, he came on her before she was aware; and how she had plunged the letter into her pocket; and how she had taken it back with her, not daring to deliver it after that ... and how ... and how...
Here, in her desire to screen the guilty partner of her trouble, her nervous narrative seemed all plucked to pieces. Her words, indeed, were less for the purpose of telling than for the purpose of stopping their own lips from asking.
"... And so ... he said he wanted me ... and he said he loved me.... I know he loved me, because he 'd told me so before. Only then.... And after that...."
But the Doctor, comfortably ensconced in Dixon's fireside chair, with its red chintz cushion in the small of his back, and half a steaming tumblerful of toddy inside him, was in no mood to be put off with such ambiguous verbal impressionism.
"Stop, stop, stop!" said he, holding up an arrestive toddy-tumbler at her. "I haena got the sense o' that. What d' ye say happened to the letter?"
"Oh ... I cannot ... I cannot," Pam said, the tendons of her narrative relaxing suddenly as though never could they be brought to bear her over this part of the history. But in the end, with point-blank questions from the Doctor, and gentle leading-words from the Vicar, Pam passed over that rocking bridge of all that had happened—only, every admission made against the man's interest was coupled with a pleader for his great love of her. And she imparted to them, with a face glorified, how that, when nothing seemed sure but death, the Spawer had told her his other attachment was broken. and had confessed his love of her all the time, and she had poured out her love of him ... and ... and they knew the rest.
"Ay, it 's a very quairr complaint, this love!" the Doctor reflected, pulling out his pipe, "... an' harrd to diagnose. Ye never can tell. Ye never can tell. But losh! ah thocht ye were clean gyte when ah hairrd ye were goin' ta marry yon fellow!"
But Father Mostyn was n't astonished in the least; waltzed gravely on his feet with a superior, restrained tightness about the corners of his mouth, and a far-away sparkle in his keen grey eyes, as of one to whom revelation is no new thing.