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

door.
    â€œI shall change my registration, Mary Howells, and I shall be a customer at the International where they knows how to be civil!”
    â€œIt is all the same to me so long as you do not come here asking for your pound of sultanas when there is not enough to go round!”
    â€œAnd as for you, Gwyn Lupton, I am surprised you have not got something better to do in a war than poke about in the ground after old pieces of money and stand about in shops poking your nose into other people’s affairs!”
    But the powder was damp, and even this squib did not go off properly. Its utterer paused in an angry and discomfited fashion, as if she were trying to set light to a new one, and then, giving it up, made a right-about-turn and departed, her umbrella still clasped rigidly in front of her, her empty basket on her arm, and her comical oilskin pixie-hood giving her the look, from behind, of a very inflexible and alarming little girl. She stumped down the garden steps and disappeared.
    â€œWell!” exclaimed Mrs. Howells, still very red in the face. “I never did expect to be insulted in my own shop over half-a-pound of sultanas!” Catching Kate’s eye, she moderated her wrath, and half-smiled. “That was all because I could not sell Ann Gilliam more than half-a-pound of sultanas this week, Miss Mayhew! Does she think I would not rather sell her a pound, or two pounds, if I could?”
    â€œWho is she?” inquired Kate, taking off her oilskin coat.
    â€œShe lives up on Rhosbach at the Cefn,” said Mrs. Howells. “She has a little smallholding there that her auntie had before her. She is a great gossip. I don’t know will Cornelius like it when I tell him I have quarrelled with her. She will say all sorts of things about me in the village now, I shouldn’t wonder!”
    The gaunt elderly person by the window-sill collected his loose limbs together and crossed over to the counter.
    â€œI would not be worrying your head about that, Mrs. Howells. There is women that gives forth venom like the snake does because it is in their nature, and Miss Gilliam is one of them, and her auntie was the same, and her great-auntie, who had the Cefn before that, was worst of any!”
    Kate thought that the speaker, scarcely looked old enough to have been acquainted with so many of this curious dynasty of Gilliam, which seemed to dispense with parents and consist entirely of aunts and nieces. He appeared to be a well-preserved fifty-five, a gaunt, loose-hung man with an eagle-like cut of profile, a ruddy complexion somewhat dimmed by a grey stubble, a dark, piercing and observant eye, and long iron-black hair that fell in a lock across his lined forehead and curled over the collar of his ancient, green-black, homespun coat. A handkerchief knotted round his scrawny throat gave the last touch of the poet, rather than of the labourer, to his distinguished looks. But his hands, large, stiff and glazed, were those of a labourer rather than a poet, as they fumbled with an old purse he had taken from his pocket. Kate wondered whether he had in that purse the Roman coin he had found on Pentrewer Tump.
    Evidently the opening of the purse brought the same subject to Mr. Gwyn Lupton’s mind, for having asked for two-pennyworth of cloves for his wife’s tooth-ache, he went on with melodious melancholy:
    â€œMiss Gilliam has no business to speak as if I was for ever delving in the ground for treasure as the pigs does after roots. It was setting rabbit snares in the evening after my work that I walked upon the tump, and it was in the rabbit-hole, there at my feet, I saw the piece of money.”
    Could I see it?” ventured Kate.
    Gwyn Lupton turned his dark, majestic gaze upon her and shook his head.
    I have not got it any longer, young lady. The gentleman at the Veault, where I am working, is an antiquary gentleman and very interested in the old remnants of our forefathers. He has