Gratia's Trials — page 33: what you’re looking at

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

g 24 ! GRATIA’S TRIALS. 4 ‘‘Isn’t he smart? Well, sweet, and can’t ‘Cousin Almira’ be ‘mamma’ too?” | ‘¢That was what Mrs. Playfair meant,” said Raymond, med- itatively, as he sat on his step-mother's lap, swinging his little red-stockinged legs in the glow of the chestnut logs. ‘What, dearie?” “Why, when my first ie was buried, she said I should have a new mother pretty soon.” This inopportune speech was followed by another silence, and then Mrs. Kempfield put Raymond down, with a little affected laugh. ‘Run up Stairs, dear, and take off your wet shoes,”’ she said, ‘‘and then, Gratia, we'll have tea.’ Miss Almira Bassett had been bad enough about the house, but Mrs. Kempfield was ten times worse. Gratia’s frank, honest nature never could have conceived beforehand what an amount of malicious mischief one woman could do; and it was all so skillfully wrought that Ira Kempfield firmly believed his new wife to be an angel through everything. Under pretense of teaching Gratia the details of housekeep- ing, she made a mere kitchen drudge of her ; under the specious vail of firmness and discipline, she treated little Raymond with a subtle cruelty that made his sister's blood boil within her. ‘- If it were not for Raymond,” she thought, again and again, when most keenly stung with the envenomed darts of her step- mother’s nae ‘“T would go away, and never look upon her face again.’ Perhaps—although Gratia did not fully comprehend her step- mother’s policy—that might have been precisely what Mrs. Kempfield desired, GComichooks:.co =