At a Girl's Mercy, or, The Fortunes of War — page 43: what you’re looking at

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

32 AT A GIRL’S MERCY. dealing with this man flushed her cheeks, but she came to her own colors valiantly. ‘You will do the very best you can, Mr. Blake? Papa is an old man, and he feels it very much that he loses this money, which he intended for the use of the army. You know how he feels about it, and you will do your best?’’ “Canterbury bells,’? he said, lightly, leaning toward her to touch the string of bells in her hand. “They were my mother’s flowers, Miss Nan. One seldom sees them nowadays. Would it be asking too much——”’’ “Oh, dear, no!’’ she said, rather ungraciously. She gave them to the thief with more willingness than to this man, who was her equal so far as the world went. ‘‘Oh, dear, no, Mr. Blake. Take them, | of course. Here!’’ she disengaged the spray of bells from the bouquet, and handed it to him, say- ing, lightly: ‘‘They are such old-fashioned flowers I wonder at your taste, Mr. Blake. There’s nothing particularly striking about them, though they look well in a bouquet.”’ “Thank you, Miss Nan,’’ he said, with calm in- difference of her scorn. ‘‘For your sake I will do the best I can in this matter with your father.”’ ‘‘He talks for all the world as though father were a criminal!’’ she cried, indignantly, as she looked resentfully after him as he walked down the garden with a quiet air of authority that aroused all her an- tagonism. ‘“‘And I have a good mind,” she added, savagely, “‘to dig out these flowers root and branch. What a depraved taste I must have when ih and others as bad, choose them, ‘Hor my sake, indeed!’ she added presently, as the memory of his words came back to her. ‘‘It’ll Gomicbooks:com