At a Girl's Mercy, or, The Fortunes of War — page 39: what you’re looking at

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

28 AT A GIRL’S MERCY, her ears ringing with the laughter and noise of her brothers through the house—the dear laughter and noise that might never again awaken the old hall so empty and lonely now. And she shyly pressed her lips to one of the blossoms that swung against her face as though in caress, as she passed slowly down the walk to the summer-house at the lower end of the garden, half buried among ivy and trumpet vines, with a wide border of tall swaying Canter- bury bells around it, their blue blossoms lifted in the sweet wind stealing down the garden, fragrant with its scents, swaying and swinging as though tolling a noiseless requiem for the boys wearing their colors on the battle-field, who might never come back to those waiting with nothing to do but pray and hope that the war would bring them less of loss than their hearts feared. These blue bells swaying on their slender stalks had been the girl’s favorites. Asa child she had never tired of hearing stories of the wonderful chimes they rang for the fairies of the garden, or how a bit of the sky had slipped down one night and changed to the delicate blossoms at the desire of a princess of fairyland. And they had grown with her; the garden in summer had never been without the sprays with their dots of blue. But now, as she bent above them, a thought that hurt her came in her mind, and she must not care for them. Had not the man who robbed them of not only their possessions but their peace of mind, and whose vil- lainy had placed her mother on a bed from which she might never again arise—had not this man chosen _ these flowers, and therefore made them hateful to her forever? For of course she could care for them no more, hating him so, hating so his admiration of m Gomicbooks.co