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

scarcely thought it could still be in use for religious services. A great pile of faggots stood just outside it, and a harrow was lying close up to the lee of its ancient wall. There was no glass in the fine traceries of the window at the gable-end, and the delicate stonework was weatherbeaten and damaged. Obviously, the walls were of great antiquity. But the roof, or most of it, was of corrugated iron, like any little non-conformist chapel newly put up to house a remote, poor congregation. The track ran round it, a very secular-looking approach, scratched up by hens and waddled across by ducks, and the farmyard pond lay near. A large square stone-built house of a strictly utilitarian Victorian type stood farther along the trackway behind a little orchard of scraggy apple trees. A perfect huddle of lean-to roofs and ancient lichen-covered barns and sheds sprawled around the house and cuddled intimately up against it, so that it preserved its smug square look of nineteenth century respectability with some difficulty, seeming to apologise, with raised stone eyebrows under its penthouse roof, for the odd company it kept.
    Which of these manifold buildings was the byre which contained Aminta, Kate could not guess. She got off her bicycle. A wall-eyed collie came suspiciously up to her, his hackles rising. She propped her bicycle against the orchard fence, and was contemplating going up to the house’s very prim front door when there came to her ears, from a long low stone roofed building beyond a very muddy yard that lay behind the chapel, the peculiar low-toned musical sound which even a town-bred ear ran recognise as the sound of milk spurting into a pail. 
    Kate skirted the yard and looked in at the open door. She was rewarded by the sight of Aminta, sitting precariously on a three-legged stool, the top of her head buried in the soft part of a bony roan cow, making great play with the muscles of her brown forearms.
    â€œAminta!” cried Kate joyfully, and realised the next instant, from the cautious manner in which Aminta, who had started violently, recovered herself, moved her tipped bucket to a safe position and herself to an upright one before looking round, that she ought to have approached with more circumspection. The cow, however, evidently a quiet lady, looked mildly round and went on eating hay.
    â€œHullo Kate!” said Aminta with pleasure, but without undue surprise for the actions of her fellow-creatures rarely surprised her. She added “Lucky Tulip’s a quiet cow, or she might have kicked half my milking over, being bounced at like that.”
    â€œI’m sorry. I say, I am pleased to see you, Aminta! You do look grand and rugged, too. Like a piece of mountain scenery.”
    Aminta, clapping Kate on the shoulder, replied genially:
    â€œI thought somehow you’d come along.”
    â€œYou did? You must be psychic if you thought that, because I didn’t think it myself till the day before yesterday.”
    â€œI thought my last letter’d fetch you. Have you joined up yet, or are you waiting to join up at the county headquarters?”
    Kate looked at Aminta, marvelling not for the first time at the strange misconceptions which add zest to friendship.
    â€œYour letter didn’t fetch me, darling. No.”
    â€œDidn’t it?” said Aminta without offence. “Look, Kate, I’ve just got to finish Tulip, if you don’t mind waiting a moment. Whups, my beauty!”
    Taking her stool in her left hand and her milk-pail in her right, Aminta inserted herself with great skill and precision between them and groped about under the cow, inquiring in a rather cow-muffled voice as she did so:
    â€œWhat did you come for, then?”
    But the spurting of milk drowned Kate’s attempt at a reply. In the year since Kate had last seen her, Aminta, who had always been pale and inclined to run to fat, had become comparatively slender, nut-brown in colour, and to