"She 's very well, ah think, yer Rivrence, thank ye," responded the postmaster, stepping forward the necessary six inches to show himself respectfully before the Vicar in the act of speaking, and retiring when his words were ended.
"Busy, is she?" asked his Reverence affably, commencing to unroll the grey bundle of flannel on the counter with a leisurely ordering of his hands—Pam lending assistant touches here and there.
"Ay, she 's busy," said the postmaster, showing again in the door-frame, and wiping his fingers on his apron, lest their inactivity might seem like disrespectful indolence before the Vicar. "Bud it 'll be slack time wi' 'er an' all before long. Theer 's not so many stamps selt i' 'arvest by a deal, nor so many letters written. Folks is ower throng i' field."
"Ha! No doubt about it. The harvest field is a fine corrective for cacoethees scribendi," said his Reverence, disposing the shirt on the counter lengthwise, with limp, outstretched arms, for Pam's inspection, as though it were some subject on an operating table. "Buttons again, you see, Pam," he told her, pointing out where they lacked.
"My word, I see!" said Pam, running over the outlines of the article with a swift, critical eye. "And wristbands and collarbands as well. You want some new shirts badly. You 've only four now, with the one you 've got on—and that," she said, turning up his cassock sleeves to get a look at it, "is almost past mending. See how thin it is.... And will you have pearl buttons, then?" asked Pam, composing the shirt to seemly folds under soft, caressing fingers, and following every move of her hands with a fascinating agreement of head, "... or plain white?"
"Ha! Plain white ... by all means," said Father Mostyn. "Large plain white for his reverence the vicar—as large and as plain and as white as we can get 'em, that lie flat where they fall, and don't run all over the floor and try to find the crack in the skirting-board. Pearl buttons are for the young and flexible (incidentally too, for the profane), and not for aged parish priests, whose knees are stiffened with a life of kneeling.... Shirts and pearl buttons must n't let me forget, though," he admonished himself, drawing the solitary, backless cane-bottomed chair under him from below, and sitting to the counter with one hand drumming on its oilcloth and the other gripping a spindle, "what I really came about."
"No," said Pam, watching his lips.
"We had a visit from our friend of the Cliff End last night."
Pam's eyes were drawn for a moment to sundry faults in the folding of the shirt, and her fingers busied themselves with their correction.
"Yes," she said, looking up again. "But you did n't have any music? ... Did you?" she asked, with the sudden eagerness for a coveted opportunity gone by.