Gratia's Trials — page 119: what you’re looking at

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

110 _ GRATIA'S TRIALS. nurse who stood beside the bed weeping heartily for company. “ «*Must this be so?” she syllabled, hoarsely, and Mrs, Play- fair nodded her head and cried harder than ever. ‘“Tt’s her fault, every bit of it,” whispered Mrs. Playfair. ‘¢ She’s done it, with her pickings and her naggings, and her cruel treatment, and if Ira Kempfield hadn't been blinder than a mole, he’d a seen how it all was going to end! © I never was so mistook about a- human creatur in all my life as I was about. that Almira Bassett! And nowshe’s took your father off to Wingley this afternoon to buy her a new winter cloak. I told him he'd better stay to hum with the boy that mightn’t be spared to him for long, but she came serpenting round, with her soft voice and her smooth ways, and coaxed him to believe we was all in a plot to deceive him and alarm him without cause. And he’s gone off, and I*hope to the Lord he mayn’t be sorry for it, that all!” And Mrs. Playfair left off crying and talking to untie the bonnet strings that-seemed to oppress Gratia’s breathing, as she stood there, pale and silent, still holding little Raymond’s . hand. _** Better set down, you won't disturb him,” she said paren- thetically. ‘‘ Well, you see the way of it was this. He’s been poorly all the fall, with a real sharp attack of croup every now and then. It does seem as if a blind man might ha’ foreseen what was coming; but she set out there wan’t nothin’ the mat- ter with him but just idleness and laziness, and somehow she made Ira Kempfield believe black was white and white black— and she wouldn't let him send for a doctor till all the neigh- bors was up in arms aboutit. She was all for taking care of him herself, when things got to the worst, but says I to Phebe Ann, ‘I knowed Mary Kempfield, that boy’s mother, when she first come here to live, fresh as a daisy—yes, and I laid her out, too, and I ain't goin’ to see her motherless boy want for what care / can give him!’ So Ira he couldn’t say ‘no’ when I come and asked him up and down, and Raymond he begged a *comicbooks.co