Gratia's Trials — page 41: what you’re looking at

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

32 GRATIA'S TRIALS. ‘Do your worst!” cried the girl, recklessly. ‘‘I fear you no longer !” | ‘‘Ah !” hissed Mrs. Kempfield, ‘‘but you don’t know yet what my worst can and will be. You have called mea—a murderess—and I wz// be revenged !” Gracia did not answer her ; she was stooping over the couch, where Raymond already seemed better from the effects of the simple remedies she had applied. The doctor came soon—fortunately he lived at no consider- able distance—and before Ira Kempfield came home to supper little Raymond was laughing and playing among the nest of pillows and blankets his sister had made for him in front of the fire. ‘‘T told you there was nothing the matter with him,” said — Mrs. Kempfield, ‘‘ only Gratia is so ridiculously fussy.” But she took care not to say this in the presence of her step- daughter, for Gratia knew, as well as she did, that they had that day stood face to face with the grim despoiler, Death. And neither of them forgot the looks and tones with which Almira Kempfield had sworn to be avenged upon the girl who had dared to call her a murderess, CHAPTER VIL. THE TWENTY-DOLLAR BILL. The winter was nearly over, and little Raymond Kempfield had experienced no return of his deadly enemy, the croup. Gratia was sitting sewing one afternoon, when the sky with- out wore the soft, intense blue of a much later period in the season, and the bfand air was full of the scents of swelling buds and the greening southern slopes, and Raymond knelt on the floor at her feet, studying out the pictures in an ancient ‘*‘ Web- ster's Spelling Book.” He was thinner and paler than he had | Eomichbooks.¢o =)