Gratia's Trials — page 84: what you’re looking at

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

4 murmured the cradle songs she had been used to sing to GRATIA'S TRIALS. 1 Raymond until the little girl fell fast asleep, with her coral — lips apart, and one hand tightly grasping Gratia’s. But the young girl did not forget Ida’s words; ‘* There is not a girl there so pretty as you are.” ‘‘She knew it ; she could not but realize it, day after day, as she looked into the glass, and saw the plain, unvarnished reflection of her own face. ‘‘ Opportunity !” thought Gratia to herself, as she sat look- ing out at the moonlight on the waves, after the child was asleep. ‘‘ Yes, that is the one thing that I lack. Yet how wrong. it is of me to repine, when I am laying by a little money for Raymond every month.” And she set herself to consider how many weeks, and months, and years it must be before she could redeem her promise to come and take Raymond away from Almira Kemp- field’s unbending rule. CHAPTER XV. AN UPWARD STEP IN THE WORLD, ‘“So you like Gratia Kempfield better than you did Natalie Browne, Ida?” said Colonel Falconer, one evening. ‘©Oh, yes, papa,” cried Ida, joyously ; ‘‘ I’m perfectly happy now.” But the current of Ida Falconer’s life was not destined to run quite so smoothly always, ‘The Long Branch season was not half over when the poor little creature fell ill of a slow fever—a wasting, cruel disease, which brought her tiny feet close to the _ gates of the grave. And in those nights of pain, those days of weary watching, Gratia seemed to be drawn nearer than ever to her little charge. No one was so patient, so unwearied, so gentle as Gratia, shrinking from none of the numerous exac- Eomicbooks. co m