At a Girl's Mercy, or, The Fortunes of War — page 148: what you’re looking at

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

AT A GIRI’S MERCY. 137 path toward the summer house, where it was Nan’s- custom to be at that time in the morning, with her flowers. But she was not there. She had gathered her flowers earlier that morning, so that she could sit with her mother when the nurse would allow. There was a sweet sadness around her mouth as she hurried through the paths, lingering not at all over her favorites, and fashioned the bouquet as she walked back to the house, ready for the call to go to her mother. It had seemed to her that there was nothing worse could come to her than this that had fallen. Her father had offered no word telling her of his knowledge of how sore her heart was as she lay weeping so hysterically in his arms, but she knew full well he understood, and the thought some- how gave her strength. This vent to her suppressed feelings had done her good, too, and the terrible stony feeling had left her heart. That Ned was dead and could never come back to her she fully realized during the long hours she spent in her room afterward, but she could command herself, and could go about her duties as gently as though it were not so, for she had renewed courage and hope in the thought of being able to go and do for those other soldiers what some one must have done for him, and she would be brave and tender as she would have wished his nurse to be to him when he was borne in, with the dreadful death wound in his side. She shivered when she thought of all these little de- tails, when she pictured, with all the graphic imagi- nation a slight knowledge offered, how he must have suffered, and yet how brave he was during those few minutes that he lived. If he only might have sent one word to cheer her through the work she would take up for his sake. Thinking of this brought Eomichbooks: co