At a Girl's Mercy, or, The Fortunes of War — page 129: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Wer 118 AT A GIRL’S MERCY. “Vou shall go up at once to mamma,”’ Nan said, her hands trembling as she helped him remove his duster in the hall. ‘‘Of course you shall go at once to mamma, papa dearest, only you must come back to me as soon as ever you can, and tell me all about . the trouble down there. I know something about it, indeed I do, from the accounts we received this morning, and I am so thankful to have you safe at home, you blessed Papa Courtland.”’ She clasped her hands around his arm in an eager, caressing fashion, and then sent him up stairs with the memory of the bright face watching him from the hall beneath, its eyes ashine, its cheeks dimpled with the smiling that could not keep from trembling around the mouth. Nan ordered the dinner brought in with a lighter heart than she did the night pre- vious, and sang again a snatch of the song she hummed then, while waiting with the dog on the piazza steps for her father’s return. “It’s a funny old world,’’ she said to herself, “‘but it’s a good world after all, in spite of it being one minute right side down, and the next as light as it ever was. It’s so good to have papa here, and mamma getting well. I could almost say there is nothing I am afraid of now. If the boys were only here and the war over!’’ | But it was not until the dinner had been eaten, and they were once more alone in the study, Nan at her father’s feet, that the history of the terrible time of riot was gone over to the listening girl. There were too many private matters connected with the telling that could not be related before the servants, and Nan was the only one, now his wife was too ill to hear such things, to whom the squire told these se- erets of his life during the war. For he knew Nan comicbooks.co mn rt aD. ot Va a a a