Free The Christmas Mouse by Miss Read

campaign,’ retorted the first lady. ‘No, you can’t blame the climate for their goings-on. It’s just that they’re made that way, and them Jarvis girls won’t cool their blood, that’s for sure.’
    It was not long before Pepe’s exploits, much magnified in conversations among scandalized matrons, were common knowledge in the neighbourhood, and it was Gloria Jarvis who was named as being the chief object of his attentions.
    Gloria may have lost her heart to Pepe’s Latin charms, but she did not lose her head. An Italian prisoner of war had little money to spend on a girl, and Gloria continued to see a great deal of her American admirers who spent more freely. Those of them who knew about Pepe dismissed the affair good-naturedly. Gloria was a good-time girl, wasn’t she? So what?
    Pepe, on the other hand, resented the other men’s attentions, and became more and more possessive as time went by. He certainly had more hold over the wayward Gloria than his rivals, and though she tossed her blonde Edwardian coiffure and pretended indifference, Gloria was secretly a little afraid of Pepe’s passion.
    The war ended in 1945, a few months after their first meeting, and Pepe elected to stay on in England as a farm worker. By this time, a child was on the way, and Gloria and Pepe were married at the registry office in Caxley.
    The child, a girl, had Pepe’s dark good looks. A blond boy, the image of his mother, appeared a year later, and the family began to be accepted in Beech Green. Pepe continued to work for Jesse Miller and to occupy one of his cottages.
    For a few years all went well, and then Pepe vanished. Gloria and the two children had a hard time of it, although Jesse Miller kindheartedly allowed them to continue to live in the cottage. It was during these difficult days that Mrs Berry had got to know Gloria better.
    She was vain, stupid and a slattern, but she was also abandoned and in despair. Mrs Berry helped her to find some work at a local big house, and now and again looked after the children to enable Gloria to go shopping or to visit the doctor. The old Jarvises were dead, by now, and the older sisters were little help.
    Mrs Berry showed Gloria how to make simple garments for the children, taught her how to knit and, more useful still, how to choose the cheap cuts of meat and cook them so that a shilling would stretch to its farthest limit.
    Happily married herself, Mrs Berry urged Gloria tofind Pepe and make it up, if only for the sake of the family. But it was two years before the errant husband was traced, and another fifteen months before he could be persuaded to return.
    He had found work in Nottingham, and came back to Beech Green just long enough to collect Gloria and the children, their few poor sticks of furniture and their clothes. They left for Nottingham one grey December day, but Pepe had found time to call at Mrs Berry’s and to thank her for all she had done.
    Handsomer than ever, Pepe had stood on her doorstep, refusing to come in, his eyes shy, his smile completely disarming. No one, least of all Mrs Berry, could have remained hostile to this winning charmer with his foreign good manners.
    ‘I did nothing – no more than any other neighbour,’ Mrs Berry told him. ‘But now it’s your concern, Pepe. You see you treat her right and make a fresh start.’
    ‘Indeed, yes. I do mean to do that,’ said Pepe earnestly. He thrust his hand down inside his greatcoat and produced a ruffled black kitten, which he held out to Mrs Berry with a courtly bow.
    ‘Would you please to accept? A thank you from the Amonettis?’
    Mrs Berry was taken aback but rallied bravely. She knew quite well that the kitten was their own, and that they could not be bothered to take it with them to their new home. But who could resist such a gesture? And who would look after the poor little waif if she did not adopt it?
    She took the warm furry scrap and held it against her face.

    ‘Thank you, Pepe. I shall