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

judge from her forearms up which at the moment terrifying ripples of muscle were passing, as hard as iron. There was evidently a great deal to be said for the Land Army as a beautifying agent.
    Kate stood in the doorway and looked across the yard at the picturesque collection of roofs which lay at the back of the farmhouse, and at the first building she had seen, which she now perceived was an ecclesiastical ruin patched up to serve as a barn. Behind it, a graceful melancholy shell of stone, holding nothing but sky in its empty windows, was, she supposed, one of the relics of antiquity to inspect which visitors paid Mr Gideon Atkins their sixpences. What looked like the remains of a cloister joined the two buildings. Kate thought that Mr. Gideon Atkins might really use some of his sixpences in clearing away the brambles which were doing their best to drag these ancient stones back into the earth from which they had come.
    Aminta stopped making soothing noises to her cow and rose to her feet.
    â€œThat’s the lot, I think,” she said, putting the frothing pail down on the cobbles and removing the ancient man’s cap she had been wearing. “Tulip’s a nuisance just at present. She’s got twins and she tries to save up milk for them.”
    Hooking her two buckets on to an iron hoop, she stepped into the middle of it, lifted it, and with this simple safeguard against splashed milk, led the way across the yard to the dairy.
    The house itself might have a prim Victorian look, but the cavernous dairy, when they entered it out of the sunlight of the yard, reminded Kate of a mediaeval dungeon. They had to descend a few steps into it, for its stone-flagged floor was below ground-level, and the vaulted, rather low stone ceiling, gave the impression of a place quite sunk below the earth, although the walls were whitewashed to reflect what light there was. The scrubbed wide shelves that ran around the stone walls, carrying flat bowls of milk, dishes with remnants of cooked food, cheeses and other such harmless and even attractive objects, looked out of place.
    Aminta put down her milk-pails with a sound like the clanking of prisoners’ chains.
    â€œI always thought,” said Kate, looking around her, “that a dairy was a light, sunny place where pink-cheeked maidens, mostly called Chloe or Amaryllis, sang songs about their swains while they swung the churns.”
    â€œYou try singing a song while you swing the churn, my child! And if the dairy was sunny, everything would go off in the hot weather. Still, I admit most of the dairies I’ve been into are a bit more cheerful than this,” said Aminta, taking a strainer and a couple of milk-cans down from nails on the wall.
    At the darker side of the room, the vaulted ceiling broke in a low stone archway, with a short barrel-roofed passage beyond, which ended in a heavily-nailed door. A variety of things, including oil-drums, old brooms, mole-traps, wooden trestles, beer-barrels, and what might have been the original butt of Malmsey that drowned the Duke of Clarence, stood in this doorway. 
    â€œWhere does the door at the end of that passage lead to?” asked Kate.
    Aminta glanced up.
    â€œTo a cellar.”
    Kate’s interest, already roused by these ancient quarters and the menacing and dungeon-like aspect of the old door, sharpened.
    â€œWhat, the one where there’s a secret passage?”
    Aminta laughed.
    â€œWho’s been pulling your leg about a secret passage?”
    â€œThe Davises of Pentrewer, who drove me up from the station, said there was supposed to be—”
    â€œYes, there is supposed to be the beginning of some tunnel or other, miles long, that pops up goodness knows where— Wigmore Castle or Aberystwyth or the Garden of Eden—you know the kind of thing! Most old houses with cellars are supposed to have secret passages, aren’t they?” said Aminta, busy over her