Her Faithful Knight — page 214: what you’re looking at

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

210 A Shadow on the Window. hunger on cold mornings. How selfish, how wickedly selfish, I have been to allow it!” Cresswell’s apron was at her eyes in a moment. “It isn’t me, Miss Phyllis, you ought to scold,’ she whimpered, “It’s Miss Dorothy. Her boots are letting the snow in, and she won't eat nothing but dry bread when she comes home at half-past ten, when you’re in bed; and even after that sometimes she sits up painting. Oh, it breaks my heart, that it does, to see you two that I’ve seen grow up in a great beautiful house and treated like young princesses, come down to work and starve like this! To think that I should remember you both, with your beauti- ful curly hair all combed and shining, driving off to the park every day with your poor mamma, and now her to be dead, and Miss Phyllis so ill, and Miss Dorothy work- ing herself to death—ch, it’s more than a body can bear!” “Don’t cry, you silly old thing, and don’t chatter!” ex- claimed Dorothy, starting up from her painting and giv- ing an affectionate hug to Cresswell, before she gently pushed her from the room. ‘Tears were in Dorothy’s eyes, too, and a lump had risen in her throat. She could not bear to think of poor old Cresswell going without her din- ner and perhaps even stinting herself in her favorite bev- erage, strong tea, thick and black as treacle. But she brushed her tears away before coming over to kneel by her sister’s couch. “Now, what put such an idea into your dear silly head?” she asked brightly. “Do I look as if I were starved? Why, I was never in better health in my life. And you, my darling, as soon as the weather gets a little bit warmer, you will feel so much stronger and happier. I will see if we can’t manage to get away to the sea for a few days at Easter——” Phyllis caught her sister’s hands within her thin fingers and drew them against her heart. Eomichbooks (E(@)