Page:George Weston--The apple-tree girl.djvu/49

 to the top of Flat Rock and was watching the sunset, and as that miracle of color began to unfold itself in the west Charlotte felt in her tender young bosom such a yearning for life and success that, quite involuntarily, she threw out her arms to the distant horizon and tears brimmed to her eyes. "I'll show them!" she whispered. "I'll show them if it's everything to be pretty, and nothing else counts!" For that, you see, had almost come to be an obsession with her; and as she stood there, watching the sunset, she saw herself, in fancy, a little Miss Moses, leading herself and her sisters into a Promised Land where pretty maids count about the same as pretty men, and the average girl can be a heroine just as well as though she were a modern Hebe.

The sunset over, she went home, thoughtfully intent upon the Great Sum which she was going to set for herself,