There May Be Danger by Ianthe Jerrold Read Free Book Online Page A

asked! Only from the librarian in the County Library had Kate received a hint of one subject which had recently interested Sidney, and that was an unexpected and an innocent one enough. He had wished, it seemed, some weeks ago, for a book on net-making.
    Turning aside from her review of the trooped asters, Kate went in at the front door, which opened, in fact was already open, straight into the shop.
    Kate had taken for normal Welsh expressiveness the high-pitched vocal noise that had been going on in the shop while she had been reviewing the asters. But as she set foot on the worn doorstep, she saw that there was a grand row going on. Kind Mrs. Howells, her hand resting on a biscuit tin as though she might at any moment hurl it like a hand-grenade, stood crimson-faced behind her counter. And on the strip of jute matting that protected her well-whitened floor, stood a spare little elderly woman with a large basket over her arm, clutching an umbrella as if it were a rifle. Between them on the counter stood an old-fashioned pair of brass scales, one or two loaves of bread and several tall glass sweet-jars, mostly empty. Leaning unobtrusively against the window sill, listening to the duel going on between the two women, stood a gaunt, elderly man of strange, poetic and wild appearance.
    â€œIt iss no wonder the poor boy ran away!” the customer was saying all but at the top of her voice. “He ran away because he wass neglected and I do not blame him!”
    â€œPlease not to say another word, Ann Gilliam!” said Mrs. Howells. Her voice was lower, but vibrated more.
    This was, it seemed, a public row, so Kate, seeing no reason why she should retire, remained in the doorway.
    â€œPlease to get out of my shop, Ann Gilliam!”
    The customer, who was no match in size for Mrs. Howells, stood with a back like a poker and two rather large feet in black gum-boots well turned out at the toes, and replied, without moderating her tone at all:
    â€œI will have my half-pound of sultanas, if you please, before I go, Mary Howells!”
    Mrs. Howells seized up her hand-grenade and banged it on to a shelf behind her.
    â€œOh, indeed, and you will not!”
    â€œYou cannot refuse to serve a customer!”
    â€œIndeed, then, I can and I do! And if you do not like it, Ann Gilliam, you can go to the police!” 
    â€œWell, I wonder you would be talking about the police, Mary Howells, in that free way! The police has been here often enough, hassn’t they, asking questions you wass not able to answer!”
    The bard-like being by the window here intervened, in a melodious, rather melancholy voice:
    â€œThere is plenty questions none of us can’t answer, Miss Gilliam, but there is also plenty more as us could answer if us was willing, but as us doesn’t answer because us is not willing, and that is more of a different matter, Miss Gilliam, whether the police is aware of it or not!”
    What there was in this speech, which was delivered not at all in a threatening, but rather in a pensively jocular, fashion, to damp Miss Gilliam’s fires, Kate could not see. But damped they obviously were.
    â€œNobody wass asking you for your opinion, Gwyn Lupton!” she said, with a somewhat half-hearted sharpness.
    â€œIf I was always waiting to be asked for my opinion,” said the bard imperturbably. “I should not have said many words in my long life. And yet there has been some times when I has not said so many words as I might have said, and people has been grateful to me because I has not said them.”
    So fascinating did Kate find the melodious and dignified delivery of these remarks that she scarcely realised that she was listening to a kind of poetic blackmail, until she saw the effect of them on little Miss Gilliam. Miss Gilliam clasped her umbrella slantwise in her arms, as if it were a lily and she a saint, tucked her elbows well into her sides, and backed a few steps towards the