Page:George Weston--The apple-tree girl.djvu/42

 tion wasn't at all pleasing to the pretty cousin.

"Mother," she said one afternoon, "what do you suppose is the matter with Charlotte?"

Aunt Grace looked at her niece as though she were ready for anything, and then she turned to her daughter in puzzled surprise. "Nothing that I can see," she said. "Why?"

"That's what I'd like to know," said Margaret, tossing her pretty head. "I don't know whether it's her nose, or whether she's studying too hard, but nobody else in the whole school looks like her. The other girls are beginning to notice it, too, and my friends are speaking to me about it. Perhaps that's why nobody ever walks home with her; I don't know." An angry answer prickled on Charlotte's tongue, but she bit it back, this being one of the difficult sums which she had set herself to do. "No, sir!" she