That Girl of Johnson's — page 209: what you’re looking at

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

198 THAT GIRL OF JOHNSON'S. you first lay in my arms quite helpless, utterly dependent upon me for help. Perhaps you never guessed that even then the thought of you and your patient sweetness for others held a depth for me that even your beautiful, grace- ful cousin could not touch. Do you believe now, Dora darling, that I do truly love my wife as I could never love another ?” She drew down the hand that held the book, and laid her warmly flushing cheek against it, the quivering, smiling lips brushing his fingers as so she held it in her two hands. ‘Ah, but you do not know,” she said, softly and low, the words almost indistinct with her bent head, that his eyes might not catch the tenderness of the sweet face, “‘you never guessed that your tenderness of me that day was the beginning of my—love—for you, Harry Dunwiddie. If you had never told me of your love I should still have loved you. I could not help loving you. Ican not help loving you now.” While the other two having passed down out of the set- tlement, followed by the half scornful eyes of the men at the tavern, crossed the rotten bridge over the river that still sobbed its miserere chorus along the coarse grass at its edge, and ascended the opposite mountain slowly among the bent bushes and mysterious mists that held in their hiding the snares of death and the pitfalls that lay in wait- ing. ‘‘Thar goes thet gal o’ Johnsing’s,” Tom Smith said, with a rough break of laughter in his deep voice. ‘‘What en ther world she’s goin’ ower yander fer beats me holler.” — ‘Goin’ ter say her prayers ower her feyther’s grave, I reckon,” joined in Hiram Sadler, coarsely, but the answer- ing laughter on Smith’s lips never passed them as Jones turned his indignant eyes upon them, removing his ee from his lips to make reply. ‘Et ’pears to me,” he said, slowly, with an erable that hushed their mirth, “‘thet ye might hev gained a mite o’ respec’ an’ kindly feelin’ arfter all these years sence (ele) ecomicbooks