At a Girl's Mercy, or, The Fortunes of War — page 112: what you’re looking at

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

Seah 1, ‘> == >: Finn, : AT A GIRL’S MERCY. 101 I must:go on now, as I have to see about the mow- ing. You may be thankful you are not a man to manage a farm.”’ She shrugged her round shoulders and lifted her arched brows. “If I were a man,”’ she said, and he knew from her changed tone that he would have a bitter reply, | “I would not stay for any upland mowing, Mr. Blake. If I were a man I would be in the thickest of the fight, doing my best to hasten the end of this terrible war.’’ He laughed easily. She should not know that she had moved him in the slightest degree. They were always at drawn swords, those two. “No doubt you would follow your own road, Miss Nan!” he said, and, lifting his hat, was gone before she could offer further reply. “I wish he had stayed just long enough for me to have answered that,’’ she said, angrily, looking re- sentfully after him, all the gentleness gone from her face, idly crushing with one tiny boot the slender string of Canterbury bells that had fallen at her feet. While striding back through the sweet upland clover Howard Blake ground his teeth in sullen wrath. ‘Tf fair means fail——”’’ he said. .CHAPTER X. A FEW CHANGES. Nan was leaning eagerly over the piazza railing, watching for her father.. There was a flush on her cheeks and a new light in her eyes. She even hummed softly a snatch of song as she stood there EGomichoo 5) (e(e) a