Page:George Weston--The apple-tree girl.djvu/40

 fudge!" was one of the things which she had learned at high school; and, as time went on, other signs of a growing sense of humor began to manifest themselves in our heroine. But on the whole, Charlotte remained much the same old-fashioned girl who had been born at Marlin Mills and raised, as a body might say, under the shadow of Micah's apple tree. She read a great deal, dreamed a great deal, and studied so hard that if you could have seen her bending over her books she would have reminded you of nothing so much as a young Minerva preparing to take her rightful place with the other elect upon Olympus.

"If people could only go on learning as long as they lived," she thought one day as she closed her algebra, "wouldn't they be able to do some wonderful sums!"

That started her thinking—she wasn't old-fashioned for nothing—and presently she continued: "Nearly every-