"He does not like me," she told herself, and without showing that she held his secret, she set herself in her own quiet, gentle fashion to verify the fact by observation. He was never a man of many words at any time, but she saw he was never a man of so few as when he was with her. He had words for the postmaster; he had words for the postmaster's wife; he had words for Emma; he had words—stray, detached, pedagogic schoolroom words, read up aloud from the chalkings on an invisible blackboard—for the villagers. But for Pam—Pam saw herself—he had only the constrained, hard words between his teeth like the enforced bit of a horse, that he champed fretfully in the desire to break away from her.
No. Pam knew what it was. He liked the postmaster because they could talk the papers over together, and predict terrible things about the country to each other; and he liked Emma because Emma was so straightforward and sensible and earnest looking—even if she was n't pretty, which perhaps, after all, she was n't—and never said silly things she did n't mean; and he liked Mrs. Morland because nobody could help liking her—she was so kind and motherly and sympathetic and talkative, and so full of allowances for other people. But Pam! ... Well, he did n't care about Pam because ... oh, because of heaps of things, perhaps. It was n't any use trying to put them all together. Because he thought she was a silly, empty-headed gad-about, who cared for nothing but showing herself around the countryside ... (but that was n't true a bit; he knew it was n't!) ... and being asked if she 'd have people....
Pam doubled up one little hand in anguish, and stared at an invisible something in front of her—that seemed to be a bogey by the startled look she gave it—with a bitten underlip twisting and struggling like a red live thing to be free; and a drawn grey cheek—till the great round tear-drops gathered in her eyes and fell hotly on her knuckles one by one.
But that was only for a moment.
Then Pam dashed the tears aside and shook her glorious head with new-found resolve. Pam would be brave; and strong; and steadfast; and still; and modest; and nobly feminine; and true. And would show him by her actions that he had done her a wrong in his heart.
Pam was still engaged upon the work of showing him when the Spawer took up his quarters at Cliff Wrangham.
CHAPTER X
On the morning following the Spawer's session at Father Mostyn's, before James Maskill had yet flung himself round the brewer's corner, his Reverence threw open the blistered Vicarage door and sallied forth genially to the Post Office in a pair of well-trodden morocco slippers, screwing up his lips to inaudible cheery music as he went, and holding in his left hand a round roll of grey stuff which, judging by wristbands of a similar texture that showed beyond the crinkled cassock sleeves, appeared to be a reverend flannel shirt. Jan Willim was chalking their price on a pair of virgin soles when he heard the insidious slip-slap of heelless leather take the cobbles like the lipping of an advancing tide, and he put his head hurriedly round the little clean kitchen door at the sound of it.
"Noo, 'ere 's 'is Rivrence," he announced, with the loud double-barrelled whisper intended to do duty as a shout on the one side and be inaudible on the other, "... an' it 'll be Pam 'e 's after.... Noo, Pam lass!"
"Ha! The very girl I wanted to see," his Reverence told her, as Pam slipped her frank face deftly behind the counter to receive him, like a beautiful honest marguerite, fresh plucked and button-holed, with a friendly upward "Yes-s-s?" prolonged through her ivory petals, pink-tipped, and' a peep of rosy tongue. "The very girl! How 's Government this morning, John?" he inquired obliquely of the deferential shadow brooding by the inner door, where the sound of straining shoe-leather bespoke the presence of somebody striving to keep silence on his toes.