Ellie Pride. Annie Groves

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 Walker…’

      ‘Good afternoon, Miss Nancy,’ Gideon responded with an easy openness that shocked and dismayed Ellie. Immediately she drew herself up to her own full height and pursed her lips every bit as disapprovingly as her mother would have done.

      ‘Miss Nancy!’ the redhead emphasised, and laughed.

      ‘Come on, Nance.’ One of the other girls tugged on her skirt. ‘There’s free refreshments for them as gets there first, and I’m fair clemmed…’

      Watching the girls hurry away, Ellie had to admit that the cheap dress worn by ‘Miss Nancy’ had far more style about it than those of her companions. Did Gideon find the redheaded mill girl attractive? Did he think her pretty…prettier than she? Did he want to kiss her? Had he perhaps already kissed her?

      Ellie’s mother considered that red was not a suitable hair colour for a young lady, and Ellie had been brought up to be proud of her own soft golden curls, but now suddenly she was sharply aware that a woman did not necessarily have to have blonde curls and ladylike manners to attract a man.

      ‘Who was that?’ John demanded, too young to feel any need to conceal his curiosity.

      ‘Miss Nancy and some of her co-workers rent rooms in the house next to where I rent my own,’ Gideon explained easily. ‘She came to me for assistance some time ago, when…when one of the girls had…had fainted. I believe that underneath her brash manner she is a good sort, and –’

      ‘These mill girls have a very hard life,’ Robert Pride interrupted. ‘Every year so many are killed in accidents with the heavy looms. There is much talk of the need to reform the conditions under which the mills are run.’

      ‘There is always talk,’ Gideon replied sharply, ‘but very rarely any action, and even when there is, the mill owners seem to find a way to circumvent it. I was called into one of the mills the other day to repair a piece of machinery – I think I would go mad had I to work there permanently. The noise alone, never mind anything else.’

      Ellie could feel the heaviness that had enveloped the two men as they talked. The looks on their faces reminded her of the man she had seen in the fish market the previous Friday when she had gone there with her mother.

      He had gathered a small crowd around him, and Ellie had been forced to wait until a pathway had been cleared before she could follow her mother past him. Whilst she had done so, she had heard the man declare, ‘These mills are a running sore on the face of our town, and worse, the running sore we can see. But what of those other sores which are hidden shamefully from view, the plight of those who work in such abominations? The plight of our womenfolk, our sisters, our daughters, our mothers…’

      Ellie’s mother had dragged her away before Ellie could hear any more.

      Now suddenly she felt angry with ‘Miss Nancy’ for intruding on the happiness of her day.

      ‘Come on,’ John was urging them all. ‘Hurry up…’

      ‘Are you sure you haven’t changed your mind?’ Gideon demanded teasingly as he and Ellie stood side by side at the top of the hill.

      All around them children were rolling their eggs, their cries of disappointment or triumph filling the air.

      Since neither she nor Gideon had come equipped with eggs to roll, Gideon and her father had purchased some from one of the booths set up in the park. Surreptitiously Ellie checked them. In her experience the right consistency of hard-boiled egg was essential if they were to roll any distance – and not just the consistency of the inside of the egg. She had always painted hers with a special paint she had mixed herself, which had helped to bond the shell together. But these eggs…

      ‘Chicken?’ Gideon demanded, laughing.

      ‘Chicken…eggs,’ John laughed, hugely delighted with his wit.

      ‘I don’t know why you are laughing, John Pride,’ Connie taunted him. ‘All your eggs are broken – apart from those eaten by your dog!’

      With the two of them squabbling amicably as a backdrop, Ellie picked up her first egg.

      Childishly she held her breath a little as it rolled down the hill, only letting it out when she saw that the egg had gone a respectable distance and remained unbroken as it lay in the small dip in the group that had trapped it.

      ‘Ah-ha. That is good, but I believe I can do better,’ Gideon boasted.

      He had seen the look of smouldering female resentment that Ellie had given Nancy, and it was that rather than any desire to win the egg-rolling race that was responsible for his high spirits. Ellie had been jealous!

      Carefully, Gideon reached for his first egg.

      ‘No, you can’t do that,’ Ellie reproached him firmly, as he gently threw the egg several yards before it dropped to the ground and rolled with great speed down the hill.

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘It’s against the rules.’

      ‘What rules? I haven’t seen any rules,’ Gideon protested, mock innocently.

      He loved the way Ellie’s eyes darkened with emotion, the way she threw herself so wholeheartedly into everything she did. Was she herself aware of the passionate intensity of her own nature or had her mother succeeded in hiding it from her beneath the smothering strait-jacket of ladylike behaviour she imposed on her?

      ‘Gideon’s egg has gone further than yours, Ellie,’ John sang out.

      Ellie reached for her second egg, giving Gideon a challenging look of determination.

      This time it was Connie who was dancing up and down in excitement as they watched Ellie’s second egg roll triumphantly past Gideon’s.

      ‘Right!’ To John’s delight Gideon immediately took up a very determined male stance, rubbing his hands together lightly before picking up his own second egg.

      Once again Ellie discovered that she was holding her breath whilst willing Gideon’s egg not to match the distance achieved by her own.

      Judiciously, Gideon mentally measured the distance from where he was standing to where Ellie’s egg lay.

      ‘Come on, Gideon,’ John shouted. ‘You can’t let her beat you. She’s a girl.’

      She certainly was, Gideon acknowledged, trying not to let himself think about the way the bodice of Ellie’s dress