The Bobbin Girls Read Free

her to each year at Grasmere, though she had never been chosen to wear the special green and white tunic and carry the linen rush-sheet herself. But then she did not live in Grasmere. She lived here, in the village of Ellersgarth, in this beautiful valley of Rusland. Between Coniston Water and Windermere, it was full of twisting lanes and fine old beeches, green fields and deep, mysterious coppice woods. Secret places where a person could hide themselves for hours, perhaps days.
    A little further north it merged into the thick forests of Grizedale where you could lose yourself forever if you didn’t take care. Alena never tired of exploring the woodlands, for all she was not officially allowed to venture far. She found following rules and regulations a great nuisance, preferring to work on the principle of what her mother didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt her. Swimming in High Birk Tarn, for instance, which was but a short, steep climb from the village and had become one of her favourite pastimes. There was little else to do in this quiet spot, and Alena felt sure that she was perfectly safe.
    ‘Will we knock on old Jessie’s door?’ Rob’s voice broke into her thoughts. He was swinging the lantern tied to a stick and as he looked down at her, waiting for her reply, the light sent odd shadows across his face, causing the gold flecks in his brown eyes to glint and sparkle. In that moment he looked much older than fourteen and Alena’s heart swelled with pride that he was her very special friend. She hoped he would remain so when he really was old. Life without Rob seemed impossible to imagine.
    In that peculiar moment of intimacy at the tarn, between one heartbeat and the next, she had longed for something she couldn’t quite put a name to. Had known instinctively that Rob felt the same way, almost as if they could read each other’s mind.
    But then she had loved Rob Hollinthwaite for as long as she could remember. He was a part of her life, a part of herself. Since her own brothers were so much older, he had been the constant companion of her childhood. As children they had played together in her cottage, on the village green or in the cold waters of the beck.
    ‘Only if you can run away quickly enough. It’s no fun if we get caught,’ she reminded him.
    Sometimes Alena had been allowed to share his lessons, which were taken at his home, Ellersgarth Hall. He’d often begged to go to school, as other boys did, or as Alena did in the village, but he was never allowed. Rob, being an only child, and, his mother insisted, rather delicate, had received his education at the hands of Miss Simpson, his nanny turned governess. Alena hadn’t minded the extra work involved when she joined Rob at his studies. For all she fussed too much, Mrs Hollinthwaite had been kind, lending Alena books and even teaching her a little mathematics and French; encouraging her to make something of her life, perhaps one day become a teacher. Alena doubted her family could afford such grand ambitions. Not that it troubled her, she cared only about being with Rob.
    And four brothers had taught her to stand her own corner when it came to pranks. They teased her for being a tomboy, but when Jim put a frog in her wellington boot, she would put a toad in his. If Harry left a dead spider by her breakfast plate she put frog spawn in his bed. Kit and Tom, being the two younger boys, would chase and wrestle with her, as if she were one of them. Yet she knew that if any outsider were to threaten her, her brothers would be the first to stand up for her.
    There was nothing Alena loved more than a bit of fun and mischief. And mischief was what they were about now. Which was another reason she so loved Hallowe’en.
    They scurried along Birkwith Row, flicking every knocker, rattling every dustbin lid, then stifling giggles behind their hands they melted swiftly into the darkness just as doors opened and light spilled out on to the pavement.
    Mrs Rigg at the