Cat and Mouse Read Free Page A

never see anyone else from Penderyn.” He shrugged.
    The Victorian Adonis looked over at the mountain. “River’s very high.”
    “Miss Evans the Milk could take you across,” said one of the men.
    “Will she be going so late?”
    “She didn’t take the milk this morning, that I do know, because she was in Swansea all the morning with my butty’s wife; gadding round the fancy shops, no doubt, getting themselves up posh—there’s women for you! But it means that she’ll be going this afternoon, Mr. Chucky, so you’re in luck; and the young lady.”
    “We’ll go up to her house and see,” said Mr. Chucky to Tinka. “It’s just by here.”
    Miss Evans the Milk lived in a tiny house perched up above the road where the bus had stopped. Mr. Chucky rapped primly at the door and then, without further ado, pushed it open and marched into the little hall and, putting his head in at one door after another, called out: “Miss Evans! Miss Evans-oh!” What the hell have I got myself into now , thought Katinka.
    Miss Evans appeared, looking in at her own front door, like a cuckoo out of its clock. She was a tiny woman with a weather-beaten face and eyes of a quite amazing gentian-blue. “Hallo, Mr. Chucky! Was you calling me?”
    “This is Miss Jones, Miss Evans, bach. We was wondering was you going over to Penderyn this afternoon?”
    “Isn’t there any way but bothering Miss Evans for a lift?” said Katinka.
    But apparently there was no other way, unless you liked to take a bus twelve miles further on into Neath, and walk back over the other side of the mountain! The river was swollen with the summer rains, and the ford had gone. “It’s not much of an old boat, mind,” said Miss Evans, doubtfully, “and the young lady with her clothes so pretty! But there you are—no other way to go!” She departed to collect her milk cans. “ She doesn’t mind,” said Mr. Chucky, complacently. “She always makes a fuss.”
    The room was hermetically sealed and coarse lace curtains shut out the lovely view. The shelves were filled with an assortment of books, romantic novels jostling well-thumbed classics, the big family Bible, lovingly protected by a fold of tissue paper, tall books of music, song books in English and Welsh. “Miss Evans’s mother came from Shropshire,” said Chucky, who seemed familiar with the affairs of everyone in the village. He gestured to where, above the bright brass firescreen that hung from the mantelpiece, an old-fashioned daguerreotype smiled down of a woman with a sheet of music in her hand. “The English Lark they used to call her; proper lovely singer she was.” Welsh accent and idiom were sometimes pronounced in him, sometimes barely discernible.
    Miss Evans returned, dangling two milk cans by their thin tin handles. Mr. Chucky took one of them, and together they all set out across the main street of the village and down the steep road to the river. Dai Jones Ych-y-fi and his companions gave Katinka a friendly parting wave; at least, she thought, I know someone now, in Wales. Slipping and skidding down the pebbly road, she trotted between her two companions—Mr. Chucky tall and straight as a ramrod, his neat shoes picking their way between the streaming puddles, Miss Evans with the milk can tinnily jangling in her little brown paw. I must be mad, thought Tinka. I must be mad—sweating up and down mountains, submitting myself to a damn Welsh downpour and heaven knows what perils of the deep to come, all to visit some half-baked little idiot that I don’t even know, and probably will loathe at sight. … A vision rose up before her eyes, a vision of Amista as she and Miss Let’s-be-Lovely had conceived her in their careless comparison of notes. A pretty face; a foolish, rather vapid, but a very pretty face, delicately oval, blue-eyed, flower-lipped, framed in conventionally curling pale gold hair. And foolish she may be, thought Tinka, but Amista’s got something that you