At a Girl's Mercy, or, The Fortunes of War — page 140: what you’re looking at

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

AT A GIRI’S MERCY. 129 mind she was asking if there could anything worse have come to her. The sun was shining, but what did she care? There was even a breeze stealing up from the south, where the clovers dotted the fields with pink. How could the world go on as though there had no terri- ble thing fallen upon her under the sunny sky? How could she go on living her life? How could she be the comforter of her father any more when she had no heart for comforting any one? Must she go on - living her life as though in truth there had nothing happened? Would this man never know that she aid not want to talk to him? Did he not know that _ Captain Travers was more than merely a. friend to her? Had he lived so near them all his life not to know that his death must be more than a trifling thing to her? Had he no heart that he could think of the sunshine and the flowers when her life seemed atanend? How cruel the world was to keep on its even course of sunshine and blossom and song when for lives like hers ay sunshine and blossom and song had died. She hated the flowers. With sudden fury she moved so that her tiny slippers crushed the flowers at her feet. She would never again spend the pleas- ant hour in the old garden gathering and arranging flowers that were no longer friends reminding her of other friends. No, never, never, would she gather flowers there. And why would this man stand talk- ing to her of them and speaking now and then in the midst of the rest, kindly words for the man for whom she could wait forever and he would not come, : “T think a canter would do you good, you are looking really pale this morning,’’ Mr. Blake said iS EOmMmICcbDOC |