Ellie Pride by Annie Groves Read Free Book Online

at her dress.’ Connie was tugging on Ellie’s arm.
    Judiciously Ellie studied the other girl, who, like them, was accompanied by her family. The Jefferies family were involved in the cotton trade, and considered to be well-to-do, even though they did not actually own any of the town’s mills.
    ‘The silk is far too rich for a daytime outing,’ she pronounced, ‘and as for all those lace frills and flounces…’
    ‘It looks very grand,’ Connie breathed enviously. ‘I wish that Mother would allow me to wear a proper grown-up dress, instead of making me wear these stupid pinafores, like a child. After all, Sukey is only a year older than me.’
    ‘She is two years older,’ Ellie corrected her, ‘and her dress is far too fussy.’
    It wasn’t just their beauty that the Barclay sisters were renowned for, it was their taste and stylishness as well, and Ellie knew instinctively just what her mother would have thought of Sukey’s gown, with all its fanciful, overdone trimmings.
    Her own dress, for all its simplicity, was, Ellie knew, far more stylish and elegant, but before she could say as much to her sister, John was rudely interrupting their conversation, demanding, ‘Oh, why must we waste time talking about such stuff? If we don’t hurry we won’t get a decent place.’
    ‘There is plenty of time, and I know the exactspot we need,’ Ellie reassured him, unaware that she was being observed keenly by Gideon, walking slightly behind them with her father, as she gave John an impishly droll look.
    ‘What, you mean you will show me the spot you’ve won the egg race from three years running?’ John exclaimed in excitement.
    This awesome feat by his elder sister had become a part of their family history, and secretly it was John’s goal not just to match it but, with luck, to better it.
    ‘What’s this? I hadn’t realised that we had a champion egg roller in our midst!’ Gideon exclaimed, joining in the fun.
    Flushing a little, Ellie nevertheless held his gaze.
    ‘I think we shall have to put your skills to the test,’ Gideon announced, ‘since I consider myself to have some sporting skill.’
    ‘Yes! Yes!’ John encouraged, dancing up and down.
    ‘What do you say, Miss Pride – will you allow me to challenge you?’ Gideon laughed.
    A little uncertainly, Ellie looked at her father, half expecting and even half hoping that he might object and insist, as she suspected her mother would have done, that such behaviour on her part would be unseemly, but to her consternation he just laughed and said, ‘You will have to be very good, Gideon, if you are to best Ellie. Had she been a boy I dare say she would be captaining the Hutton cricket team by now.’
    They had nearly reached the end of the elegant colonnaded walk that led into the park. Several family groups had paused to chat, and Ellie recognised her cousin Cecily in one of them, with her fiancé, but she didn’t draw her father’s attention to their presence, sensitively aware that Cecily might not want to acknowledge them if she was with her fiancé’s family.
    Cecily’s father-in-law-to-be was, as Aunt Gibson had proudly informed her sister, a very senior Liverpool surgeon, Sir James Charteris, who, through his wife’s family, was connected with the nobility!
    A group of girls of around her own age hurried past them, and Ellie guessed from their loud voices that they must work in one of the town’s mills. Everyone knew that the noise inside the weaving sheds turned people deaf and that the millworkers had devised their own sign language for communicating with one another.
    One of the girls suddenly stopped. Taller than Ellie, with a wild mane of thick curly red hair and a pale complexion, she gave Ellie an astutely assessing female look before tossing her head dismissively and going boldly up to Gideon, throwing him a look that was openly flirtatious, as she exclaimed in the thickest of the town’s dialect, ‘Well, if it isn’t Mr Gideon