Ellie Pride Read Online Free

around the Prides the warm night air was punctuated by the sounds of people’s enthusiastic excitement, and as for the smells…! Ellie wrinkled her nose as one of the Southport shrimpers walked past in her distinctive local dress, carrying a tray of her wares. The wings of her white hat were so wide that Ellie marvelled they weren’t crushed by the crowd, but then everyone knew that the shrimpers were a formidable band of women and took care not to jostle them.
    John started to beg for some, but Lydia shook her head. It had been a hot day, and heaven alone knew just how long the shrimps had been on those trays. A scuffle broke out amongst the crowd and Robert started to move his family out of the way.
    ‘Ellie, let go of me,’ John demanded. He had seen a school friend a few yards away and was determined to boast to him about how close he had been able to get to the balloon in Avenham Park before it had begun its ascent.
    ‘John!’ Ellie protested, as he finally broke her hold and darted into the crowd. ‘Come back here.’
    She went after him, calling crossly to him as she did so, but he refused to pay any attention to her.
    Having gained his freedom, John quickly abandoned his original goal of reaching his friend and instead started to make for the front of the street, intent on getting a better view of the procession.He thought it a poor thing that his father had refused to allow him out on his own or, at the very least, agreed that they could walk alongside the procession.
    For an agile ten-year-old, wriggling through the tight-packed mass of people was relatively easy; for Ellie, following furiously in his wake, it was very much more difficult.
    With her hair up and her new dress on she was not a young girl any more but a young woman. Disapproving matrons and high-spirited young men both commented on her progress through their midst in terms that brought a hot sting of colour to her face, although for very different reasons.
    When one young gallant actually dared to refuse to let her pass until she had allowed him a kiss, she gave him such a look of fulminating fury and disdain that he immediately stepped back. Where on earth was John? Despairingly Ellie searched the crowd. She had come only a few yards down Friargate, but the press of people was such that she felt almost as though she was in an alien land. All around her she could hear the hum of unfamiliar accents mingling with those of the townsfolk.
    ‘John!’ she called out, relief filling her as she suddenly saw his familiar tow-coloured head only feet away from her.
    The procession was almost out of Friargate now and, as Ellie plunged into the crowd to grab hold of John, it suddenly became a dangerous maelstrom of humanity as it poured into the space left bythe procession and surged down the street behind it. To Ellie’s shock she suddenly found herself being lifted off her feet by the sheer force of the tightly packed bodies and carried forward, totally helpless. She started to panic, frantically trying to turn round and make her way back to where she had last seen John, but the press of the crowd made it impossible for her to do so. It was the most frightening sensation she had ever experienced.
    She gave a small cry of pain as her new straw hat was tugged off, causing its pins to pull on her hair. She could hardly breathe, let alone move. She could hear other women screaming and men calling out but somehow she felt oddly distanced from the sounds. Her chest felt so tight, she could feel her own heart pounding, and her head too. Someone’s elbow jarred accidentally into her body but she barely felt the blow. She wanted her father! Her mother! She tried to call for them but could only make a tiny pitiful mew of sound, it was becoming so hard for her to breathe. There was a dreadful pain inside her chest, as though it was being crushed…
    Gideon Walker had seen Ellie as he made his way through the crowd and had immediately recognised her as the pretty