At a Girl's Mercy, or, The Fortunes of War — page 47: what you’re looking at

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

te 36 | AT A GIRL’'S MERCY. re-entered the house, and carried the flowers up to. her mother’s room, leaving them at the door in the hands of the nurse, who told her, speaking low, that there was no change, and it was impossible as yet to tell how the fever would turn. Then she again went down stairs to learn the duties of the house, of which she knew very little, therefore committing many blunders with the best of grace, though she was tempted many times to leave the work in the hands of the servants who evidently knew so much more than she about the management of the house. Had there been no other housekeeper than she, it is doubtful what sort of a dinner would have been placed on the table that night, but as it was witha competent woman in charge, things passed off smoothly enough. By and by, tired exceedingly, and sadly disap- pointed at not being allowed to see her mother, Nan went down in the garden to her favorite seat in the summer-house, dreading the callers she knew would come, now that they had had a chance to recover. She had had no time to even glance at the morning paper, and watching the paper for every item of news of the war was one of the duties she never failed in, half sad with their accounts of those dead and wounded, glad when she found no entry of her brothers’ names among that terrible list, though now and then her eyes had been brightened by an account, only a few words it might be, but meaning so much to her, of the bravery evinced by Private Frank Courtland, or the glimpse of a wild bit of magnificent fighting done by Captain Charlie Court- land at the head of his company. How many times she had opened the sheet with trembling hands, a chill of fear at her heart that m Ecomicbooks.co