Page:George Weston--The apple-tree girl.djvu/22

 don't think you can greatly blame her, or wonder if it helped to make her more old-fashioned than ever. Such was the atmosphere in which she grew up.

Below the farm was Marlin Mills, its houses falling in, and columbines and ragged robins growing among the ruins of the dam. A handful of children still attended the school where Nathan Hale once taught; but every year the number decreased, and every year a new teacher had to be found to brave the increasing loneliness. And when Charlotte returned home from school and walked past the orchard, Micah's tree was waiting to remind her why old houses creak at night and why the wind howls down the chimney at times with such a note. And when she went in the house there was her father, old Moses Marlin, a grim, gaunt man who had never quite forgiven her because she wasn't a boy.

There are times, indeed, when I, too,