Read Online Down Weaver's Lane by Anna Jacobs - Free Book Online Page A

moving house to Feather Lane, one of the original streets of cottages in Northby, had been put aside for a rainy day.
    He sighed. Mr Bradley said they took folk who’d been sentenced to transportation out to Australia and had shown him on the big globe where it was, right at the other side of the world. Months it took to get there, seemingly. Jack couldn’t understand distances like that, for he’d never even left Northby, except to go for walks on the tops. Neither had Tom.
    He heard the shrieks and yells from a distance and at first smiled because it sounded like a group of little lasses playing. But as he got to the end of the narrow ginnel between two cottages and stepped into Weavers Lane, he realised the sound was not a happy one and hurried round the bend to see what was wrong. He stopped in shock as he recognised Mr Butterfield’s daughters pelting a third girl with dirt and stones.
    The stranger was picking up the stones and throwing them back with considerable accuracy, but they had her trapped in an angle between two houses and with two against one were beginning to wear her down. It was obvious the attack was premeditated, for the Butterfield girls had gathered a pile of stones. Their backs were towards him but every line of Lal’s body spoke of anger and determination. She was throwing the stones as hard as she could as well as scooping up mud from a puddle and hurling that, heedless of whether she splattered herself.
    Their victim had a cut on her cheek already and was trying to protect her face against the furious onslaught as well as throw back some of the stones. Even as he watched, Lal rushed forward and bowled the stranger over, beginning to pummel her as hard as she could and calling on her sister to come and kick their victim.
    Horrified, Jack ran forward. ‘Hoy! Stop that at once, Lal Butterfield!’
    The older girl paused briefly to see who it was. ‘You mind your own business, Jack Staley!’ Turning back, she slapped her victim across the face.
    The lass underneath her had managed to pick up a small stone and she immediately clouted her attacker on the head with it, but she was too small to throw the bigger girl off.
    With a howl of fury as well as pain, Lal tried to scratch the other girl’s eyes out.
    Jack hauled her off, then ranged himself in front of the victim, who scrambled to her feet. ‘Stay there a minute and I’ll see you home,’ he tossed over his shoulder, then gave Lal a shake and said, ‘Stop that screeching, you!’
    ‘She hit me!’
    ‘Well, you hit her first.’ Cautiously he let go of her.
    For a moment everyone stood still, the only sounds being the faint noise of other people in the distance. Lal was panting from her exertions as she glared first at him then at her victim.
    Dinah tugged at her sister’s arm and whispered, ‘Come away now, do.’
    Lal tossed her head. ‘I’ll get her next time,’ she promised. ‘You won’t always be around to save her, Jack Staley.’
    He grabbed Lal’s arm as she turned to walk away. ‘Why are you doing this? Whatever would your father say to such behaviour?’ Everyone in town was well aware that Dinah always did as her elder sister said, so he ignored the younger girl.
    ‘She’s got into me!’ Lal gestured scornfully towards the stranger, who was trying to wipe the dirt off her face.
    ‘Why? What’s she done to you?’
    ‘Come to live in Northby, that’s what. Our mother’s furious about it and so am I.’
    ‘She’s our cousin,’ Dinah explained in her quiet, whispery voice, earning herself an immediate punch in the ribs from her older sister.
    ‘What did you have to say that for?’ Lal demanded. ‘Now he’ll tell everyone and they’ll all scorn us for being related to someone like her. ’
    Jack looked down in puzzlement at the girl he was protecting. He could see nothing terrible about her. Indeed, she was a pretty little thing, or would have been had she not been splattered with muck. ‘You’d better