Page:George Weston--The apple-tree girl.djvu/69

 the stove and tried a new one with a quick dab of her moistened finger. The motion was quicker than the eye could follow, but her thoughts seemed to be on something else, because while she was trying the iron she was drawing a long, slow sigh. "I shall miss you an awful lot, Charlotte," she said.

They looked at each other—aunt and niece; Experience and Youth—and though neither spoke, each knew that the other was thinking of Margaret. As though by mutual consent they stood listening for a moment to the song Margaret was practising in the front room:

Aunt Grace spoke first. Not even by silence would she consciously place her pretty daughter in the wrong. "If you ever find it lonesome over there," she said, "you come right back here.