"Not so fast; not so fast," Father Mostyn reproved her. "I feared what my words might induce. Let 's beware of the fatal trick of jumping at conclusions. It does not appear at present what a helping hand, in its strictest interpretation, may mean. You see ... we 've got to remember ... our friend is n't like the common ruck of 'em. No mere bread-and-cheese musician, dependent on the keyboard for his sustenance, but a dilettante ... a professional patron of the muse, so to speak, who is n't solely concerned with its sordid side of pounds, shillings, and pence. I told him he 'd have to let us feed him the next time he came to see us. Not dine him ... but feed him. And he seemed to cotton to the idea. So now, dear child, what are we going to do about it?"
"Oh!" Pam pressed a hand flat to each cheek and fastened a look of round-eyed, incredulous delight on Father Mostyn's face. "Is it to be a party?"
"Not altogether a party." Father Mostyn pursed up his lips dubiously over the word. "Let 's beware of confusions in our terms, dear girl. Not a party. Nothing set or fixed or formal. Not a dinner. No, no; not a dinner. A feed. That 's what it 's to be."
"Yes," said Pam, sticking close to the suggestion as though she were afraid of losing it, and nodding her head many times with an infinity of understanding. "I know. A feed. What sort of a feed?"
Father Mostyn's judicial eyebrow shot up like the empty end of a see-saw.
"That 's what we 've got to settle. I rather fancied.... You see—the weather 's so hot ... we must consider. My idea was ... I thought, perhaps ... we 'd have something rather cooling. Something, say, in the nature of a cold spread.... But anything you like, dear child," he allowed her. "Just think out for yourself—when I 've gone—the very best you can do for us, and we 'll subscribe to it in success or failure when the time comes. And now, let 's settle when the time 's to be. When can we manage it, think you?"
"To-night? ... were you thinking of?" said Pam.
"Ha!" Father Mostyn wagged his hands free of all part in the proposal. "I was thinking of nothing. But to-night 's a little too precipitate, dear child. To-morrow night, then, let us say, and I 'll ride up to the Cliff myself some time this morning, and take the invitation."
So it was arranged, and the post rattled up over the cobbles, and his Reverence departed, after a genial word with James Maskill.
"Ha! Here comes the joyful-hearted James," he said to the figure of the postman, that showed hot and angry through the doorway, gripping the neck of his red-sealed canvas bag as though it were a doomed Christmas turkey, and waiting sullenly sideways for his Reverence to pass by. "No need to ask how the joyful-hearted James is. Fit and smiling as ever. Not even the burden of other people's letters can disturb his equanimity. Splendid weather for you, James. Don't stand; don't stand. Come in, and let 's see what you 've got inside your lucky-bag this morning—anything for the Cliff End at all? Eh, Pam?"