Free Ellie Pride by Annie Groves Page B

uncomfortable. Ellie couldn’t wait for the next few weeks to be over. In fact, she decided crossly, she wished her mother would have the baby now and then perhaps the Pride household might get back to normal!
    ‘Ellie, I wish you would not speak to me in such a way,’ Lydia responded sharply. ‘Did you tell Jenny about the sheets, like I asked you to? They must be sent straight back to the laundry, and no bill paid until they are returned properly laundered – and whilst we are on the subject, you must take care to watch what Jenny is doing on washdays. She cannot be left alone in the washhouse with the copper. If she is she will skimp on her duties!’
    Ellie bit on her bottom lip. Gideon would be here soon. He had promised her that he would make all speed to come round to Friargate the moment he arrived in Preston, and her uncle had already been round to the shop to try to persuade her father to join him in one of his favourite drinking haunts.
    Gideon! Ellie was longing to see him again. Would he kiss her as he had done before? A delicious sense of anticipation was filling her, increasing her impatience with her mother.
    ‘Ellie! Pay attention! You are not listening to me! Jenny –’
    ‘I’m sorry about the washing, Mother, but you said that the things for your lying-in had to be prepared, and because of the rain it took longer to get everything dried.’
    ‘You must not make excuses for her, Ellie. Like all domestics Jenny will try to take advantage, if you let her – Ellie, why do you keep looking towards the window?’
    ‘It is nothing, Mother, only that Gideon Walker has promised to take us all boating on the river. John is so excited, and –’
    ‘Gideon Walker?’ Lydia interrupted her sharply, struggling to control the surge of fear and hostility that drove the dull ache in her temples into a hammering crescendo of pain. Just recently she had begun to sense a change in Ellie, a new wilful stubbornness that reminded her all too painfullyof the way she herself had been at the same age. ‘Ellie, I need you here with me. You know that I am not well.’
    ‘You said that you wanted to be left alone to sleep,’ Ellie reminded her mother, aching with impatience to be gone. ‘And besides, I have already promised John that we are to go on the river. Father said it would do us all good to get out in the fresh air,’ she could not restrain herself from adding.
    ‘Ellie, I do not want you to go. I want you to stay here with me,’ Lydia stopped her angrily as she turned to the door.
    Ellie stared at her mother. ‘But…but why?’ she demanded. She could feel the whole of her stomach cramping in anger and disbelief. Hadn’t she done everything she could to make her mother comfortable, and to do as she was bidden these last difficult weeks? ‘You are just being mean because you are cross, and –’
    ‘Ellie, how dare you speak to me like that?’ Lydia demanded angrily. ‘And as for you going anywhere with Gideon Walker, I absolutely forbid you do so!’
    Ellie could not believe that this was her gentle, loving mother speaking to her so.
    ‘No,’ she denied fiercely, ‘no, I won’t stay. I won’t!’ Tears of confusion filled her eyes as she heard the rebellion in her own voice, and her legs trembled a little at her defiance, but that didn’t stop her from hurrying towards the door and wrenching it open.
    Lydia watched Ellie leave in shocked disbelief. Had she behaved in such a way as a girl her mother would have had her whipped! Of course, Lydia knew exactly who to blame for her daughter’s behaviour. Gideon Walker!
    What had happened to the mother she loved, Ellie wondered angrily, distressed flags of red flying in her cheeks as she hurried downstairs. For weeks now Ellie had dutifully acted as a go-between for her mother, conveying her increasingly demanding instructions to Annie and Jenny, and doing all she could to appease both of them as well as her mother. If anyone should have a headache,