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Author's Chapter Notes:
I have internet again, so I can update! This chapter took a little wrangling; let me know if you think it went where it should have gone.

Pam would later remark to Jim that she had not previously, in the many years she had worked for the Colonel, seen so many people come into the small parlor. This time it was Katy, who fluttered in—fortunately or unfortunately depending on whom you asked, after Jim and Pam had completed the more visibly amatory elements of their mutual confession of love—in a bustle of petticoats. How silly of the butler not to have told her that Mr. Halpert had arrived! She was so sorry they’d been separated at his party, but she was so delighted to see him here today, and wasn’t it wonderful, Miss Beesly, how one never seemed bored in Mr. Halpert’s company? It took her several minutes before there was a cessation or even a pause in the flow of her chatter, and in the event it required Jim putting his arm around Miss Beesly to check her in her voluble expressions of pleasure at his appearance. Unfortunately, she did so only to enquire as to Pam’s health, believing that she must be in dire circumstances indeed for Mr. Halpert to so forget himself as to physically support her.

 

This provided Pam with the opportunity she desired to deliver what was, for such a mild-mannered young lady as herself, quite a set down. She established first that she was, on the contrary, in the finest fettle she could recall having been in, as she found herself in the happy situation of being engaged. When Miss Scott expressed herself to have understood as much, Pam took the liberty of contradicting her by suggesting that, by a rather surprising concatenation of factors, she had become rather disengaged from Mr. Anderson, and that the engagement she was referring to was of a rather newer date. She then coyly suggested that perhaps Miss Scott had indeed passed Mr. Anderson on the stairs? No? Well, certainly, it would have been possible for her to have done so, for he had only recently exited the building after the official breaking of their engagement. Oh yes, Miss Scott was quite perspicacious to observe that this left little time for her to have become engaged again, and indeed, had the gentleman in question not been present in the room at the time it might have taken a substantially longer time to have achieved this particularly felicitous state. No, no one else had been there except the Colonel, and no one could imagine he was interested in Miss Beesly or the reverse, and the Lieutenant, whom everyone knew to be—and here she glanced sidelong at Jim, whom she had told this to previously only to be laughed at for her pains—hopelessly in love with Miss Martin. She would leave it to Miss Scott to understand how, under these particular circumstances, it was utterly proper for Mr. Halper to have put his arm around her and embraced her whatever the state of her health at that moment.

 

To give Miss Scott credit, she took this rebuff very well, and was not so slow on the uptake to miss the conclusion Miss Beesly had so clearly set out for her. She wished the new couple well; took Mr. Halpert to task in a most jovial manner for having led her to believe somewhat otherwise of his affections, but coupled this most convincingly with an expressed belief that had Miss Beesly not previously been otherwise attached she was quite certain there could have been no confusion; and contrived to slip out of the room before losing her composure and giving way to the tears that had begun to form in the edges of her eyes. In turn, Jim conveyed to her his utmost apologies if he had in any way misled her, but assured her that her assumption was correct—that until this time he had thought Miss Beesly completely unattainable and therefore put any thought of such things out of his head, and that his interest in Miss Scott herself—while by no means of such a nature or order as ought to compromise or otherwise indict either of them—had not been in the least feigned or imagined. They parted on good terms, though none of the three had any high hopes (or indeed the least wish) of continuing a close association between Miss Scott and the newly engaged couple.

 

Upon her exit from the room, Pam noticed that Jim had not, in the entirety of the ensuing conversation, removed his hand from her upper arm, and found herself nestling in to the crevice created between his arm and side. He in turn took advantage of her new position to whisper in her ear that perhaps it would be best to exit the premises, lest another set of visitors should intrude upon their happiness. He also ventured to add that, unless long engagements were a requirement for her (this earning him a slap on the side from his amused by annoyed fiancée) they might consider a special license, as he knew a clergyman or two from his Oxford days who might be convinced to officiate at a wedding on small notice. Pam smiled up at him and expressed perfect happiness with both halves of his plan, and the two lovers slipped out a side door (held open for them by the Colonel’s butler, who unbent so far as to smile beatifically on two individuals he held in high esteem and believed to be entirely well-suited) and ventured out towards Camden Market where, the bride-to-be recalled, there was a particularly good little shop that sold all varieties of goods, as well as the new innovation of pre-packaged ready-to-eat food—which was only appropriate as they both found themselves to be massively hungry.

 

Miss Beesly—or to say more properly, Mrs. Halpert—would later swear that Jim had never left her side on that walk north, but when they found themselves in front of the little shop he suddenly revealed a ring from within his coat and presented it to her right there on the street. She had thought her happiness at high tide before; this overwhelmed all dykes and embankments and reduced her (as she later said) to a puddle right there in the road. After another embrace (and more than a few looks of a questionable nature from passers-by) they entered into the shop, Miss Beesly having happily exchanged the temporary nakedness of her ring finger for the far more comfortable state of a public expression of her attachment to Mr. Halpert.

Chapter End Notes:
Thank you for reading and reviewing. There's still a little to go--not much, but even in a romance I don't think you should close the curtain before we get to see a little of the aftermath of the proposal.

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