Gratia's Trials — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

6 GRATIA’S TRIALS. ungrateful talk as that; Almira does more than half a dozen girls.” ‘<She gets well paid for it!” retorted Gratia, bitterly. ‘‘'There’s some things money can't pay for,” said the farmer. ‘‘ She is a sly, disagreeable old maid,” went on Gratia, hotly, ‘Cand mamma never liked to have her here, when z She checked herself abruptly, for, chancing to turn her head, she saw a short figure close behind her ; and caught the basilisk gleam of Miss Almira Bassett’s Chinese-lidded eyes, that looked like two gray slits in her face. Miss Bassett might have been thirty, or she might have been forty. She was one of those well-preserved old maids at whose age no one can make an exact guess. She was soft-stepping and soft-voiced, with thick lips and a flat nose, and a skin deeply pitted with pock-marks, while her thick black hair shone like satin on either side of its parting, and she habitually wore a black velvet band around her somewhat thick throat, and skirts which scarcely rustled as she walked. } ‘‘ Gratia, dear,’”’ she said, in a persuasive, oleaginous voice, - ‘would you mind getting in a little fresh, cool water from the well? Your poor dear pa is tired to death, and I can’t leave your ma—she’s more light-headed than usual to-night, poor thing, or I would go myself.” ‘“ Doe she want it?” asked Gratia. ‘“'To be sure she does,” said Miss Bassett. ‘‘I should not have mentioned it for myself, you may rest assured.” Gratia caught up the cedar pail which usually stood on a wooden bench by the kitchen door, and scudded away to the well, just beyond the garden wall. She came back presently, breathless and panting, from the haste whick she had made. A minute or two afterward, when Almira Bassett’s noiseless footsteps glided across the little hall which formed a sort of quarantine between the sick-room and the rest of the house, Gratia crept after her like a shadow. _ Although it was not yet dark out of doors, a dull light. was Eomichooks (e(e) =)