Free There May Be Danger by Ianthe Jerrold

milk-strainer.
    â€œYou mean there isn’t the vestige of such a thing here?”
    â€œI don’t know, I’m sure,” said Aminta indifferently. “Old Gid says there isn’t, and he should know. I’ve never been in the cellar.”
    Such incuriousness seemed to Kate excessive, even for Aminta.
    â€œYou’ve been a whole year in a house that’s supposed to have a secret passage leading out of the cellar, and you’ve never even looked in the cellar to see if there’s a trap door or anything?”
    â€œWell, I’m generally rather busy doing other things. And as a matter of fact, the cellar door’s always kept locked, so I wouldn’t be able to look around there, even if I wanted to.”
    â€œKept locked! Why?”
    â€œOh, well, sightseers used to come sometimes and want to look round it. It’s part of the old foundations of the Abbey, you see. And Gid hates sightseers, and small blame to him. It’s bad enough to have them crawling round the yard in the summer, without letting them into the house. And when the Morrisons first came to the Veault, Mr. Morrison annoyed old Gid rather by coming and enthusing about this imaginary secret passage and wanting permission to search for it—he’s an American, awfully nice, but rather enthusiastic—and Gid got very cross about it. And one day he found Mr. Morrison in the cellar looking round, and suspected him of having designs on some old rusted-in grating that Gid says leads to an old drain, if it leads to anything at all. And there was a great row, and Gid’s kept the door locked ever since. He threatened to have the cellar filled in, but he hasn’t done it yet, and I should think he’d had too much sense to waste money on such a thing. But gosh he was cross! Old Gid’s home is his castle, and nobody’s allowed to forget it!”
    â€œSounds a bit of a dog-in-the-manger to me.”
    â€œOh, I don’t know, Katy! A historic ruin is a trial to its owner, you know. Anybody that wants to come and gape at old stones seems to think it’s your duty to leave off work and show them round. Mr. Atkins makes them pay sixpence each to come in the yard and walk round the refectory and cloister ruins, and won’t have them in the house at any price. That keeps them off a bit,” said Aminta, with satisfaction.
    But Kate’s sympathies were with Mr. Morrison, locked out from the promising beginning of an adventure with a secret passage. Secret passages, were, she imagined, mostly figments of the popular imagination: but even the flimsiest rumour of a secret passage must invest an ancient cellar with a peculiar fascination, and she thought it very uncivilised of Aminta’s employer to deny a harmless amateur archaeologist his bit of fun.
    â€œI’ve heard a lot about your Mr. Atkins in Hastry,” said she. “What’s he like, Aminta?”
    â€œOh, all right,” replied Aminta. It was her invariable reply to inquiries of this sort.
    â€œShall I see him?”
    â€œI wonder you didn’t see him as you came in. He was hedging up by the gate half-an-hour ago.”
    â€œWhat? Do you mean to say that was him?”
    â€œI expect so.”
    â€œThat tubby quiet little man? With eye-glasses?”
    â€œYes, I believe so,” said Ami looking a bit vague, as though a year were hardly long enough for her to have noticed whether her employer wore eye-glasses or not.
    â€œWell, I’m blowed!” muttered Kate, trying to reconcile the reality of Mr. Gideon Atkins’ unobtrusive and rotund personality with what she had heard of him.
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œSo meek and mild! I thought he was a much more terrifying kind of chap.”
    â€œHe can be, when he likes,” said Aminta, on a slightly defensive note, as though she felt it her duty to protect her employer’s reputation from the charge of meekness. “You ought to have