Page:George Weston--The apple-tree girl.djvu/66

 For a long time after the piano downstairs had stopped, Charlotte lay awake, her Three Great Sums temporarily eclipsed by that greater problem which comes to nearly all of us at some time or other: that absorbing conundrum which relates to the making of a living, and is sometimes referred to as the Problem of Existence.

"Oh, well," she thought, punching the pillow just before she settled down to sleep, "I'm young and healthy, and that's a lot to be thankful for. Think of those poor emigrant girls who come over here, strangers in a strange land, and can't even speak English. If they can get on I'm sure I can. So I'm not going to worry any more about it. There's some way I can make a living in a great, big country like this, and if I'm smart it won't take me long to find out how."

She "found out how" the very next day, and the thought came to her (as such things often do) like a flash. "The