The postman dropped his eyelids to their thinnest width of obstinacy, and said nothing. Pam waited, looking persuasively at his great freckles (so unlike her own), and still holding him up against the brickwork, as though he were Barclay, in need of it on Saturday night.
"You did n't really ... think I would do such a thing.... Did you now, James?" she asked him, after a while, trying to gain entrance to his heart by a soft variation on the original theme.
"There 's some on 'em would," James muttered evasively through his lips, when it seemed that Pam meant going on looking at him for ever. "... Ay, in a minute they would."
"But not me," Pam pleaded.
"Ah did n't say you," James answered, after another pause. "Ah said ah did n't know."
"But you do know, don't you?" Pam urged him. "You know I would n't; don't you, James?"
The postman changed embarrassed heels against the brickwork.
"'Appen ah do," he said, with his eyes closing.
"Say you do," Pam begged. "Without any 'happen,' James."
There was an awful period of conflict once more, in which James showed a disposition to clamp both heels against the brickwork together, but this second time his good genius conquered.