Then he set his teeth and brought the whip down hissing venomously, as though desirous to get clear of the sound of his own words and weakness. The bay mare sprang up into the sky like a winged Pegasus, taking James Maskill and the trap along with her, and before Pam's eye could catch on to them again, they were gone in a cloud round the brewer's corner.
CHAPTER XI
Then for two days there were six very busy girls in Ullbrig—busier, indeed, than any other six girls in the world, I think, and their name was Pam. They cooked things in the little clean kitchen that gave forth a savor like all the flesh-pots of Egypt; things that turned Jan Willim's nostrils sideways in his head through trying to smell them from the shoemakery at work with his head down, and elicited a constant sound of snuffling outside the Post Office as of pigs that prize their snouts under the stye door at feed time. They went abroad with baskets, whose white napkins Ullbrig's fingers itched to lift, and pushed open the blistered Vicarage door without knocking, and passed in. They were seen to pay calls at Mrs. Fussitter's, and then Ullbrig sent bonnetless emissaries after them, with their bare arms wrapped up in harden aprons, to inquire:
"Ye 've 'ad Pam wi' ye just noo, en't ye? ... Ay, ah thought y' 'ad. Ah thought ah seed 'er... Ah 's think she 'd nowt to say for 'ersen, 'ad she?"
You may judge, then, if Pam was busy.
But in the end the things that had to be done were done, and the appointed hour came to pass, and Pam slipped through the Vicarage door with the final basket, and did not emerge again, and the shutters were drawn in both windows.
("Ay ... see ye ... look there! ... If ah did n't think they would," said Mrs. Fussitter, when all hope had gone with the second. "They weean't let onnybody tek a bit o' interest i' them, ah-sure. Ah mud just as well 'a gotten on wi' my work nor waste time ower them 'at dizz n't thank ye.")
And lastly, the Spawer rode down from Dixon's when the dusk was falling, to enjoy the ripe fruits of all this preparation. They heard the sound of his bell, percolating the stillness from Hesketh's corner like a drop of cool musical rain, and Pam said: "Here he is," in a whisper, almost awestruck, and bit her nails between her white teeth with a sudden enlargement of eye, as though they 'd been lying in wait for a burglar all this time, and the burglar had come.
And for a moment her heart failed her. She did n't know what to do. For how was she there? Why was she there? By what right was she there? What folly or blind presumption had led her to be there? Why had she ever consented to be there?
Suppose it was all a mistake, after all, and he did n't really expect her. What would happen then? What should she do if his face dropped discernibly when she showed herself, and he became cold?