Page:George Weston--The apple-tree girl.djvu/167

 he still cares, or he wouldn't have done that! But why does he act so distant and dignified?"

It didn't take her long to find a plausible answer.

"Yes," she thought, "it must be his pride. It's because I ran away that afternoon; and, of course, he doesn't know—that I've changed. I shall have to show him, somehow, that I'm sorry I ran away—if I can—without being bold."

She was still thinking it over when Neil's last patient went.

"Perhaps if I give him an awfully sweet smile when he comes in," she thought—"like this."

But "awfully sweet smiles" had never been in Charlotte's line, and when she practiced one her face felt so funny that she straightened it at once and frowned to herself with her expressive eyebrows, as though to restore the balance.