Page:George Weston--The apple-tree girl.djvu/78

 went Charlotte, as old-fashioned and bonny a figure as you would have found in these United States that day. Down over the bridge she tripped, past the grist mill with its columbines and ragged robins growing among the ruins of the dam, past the old blacksmith shop with the leather fallen from its bellows and its forge fire cold for nearly half a century, past a row of deserted tenements with gaunt holes in their roofs and half their clapboards gone, but each with its horseshoe hanging over the door to keep bad luck away.

The next cottage had curtains at the windows and zinnias growing in the front yard, and when Charlotte turned in at the gate she immediately became conscious of the shrewd-faced old woman who was watching her through the window.

"Hello, Mrs. Johnson!" she laughed, waving her hand. "I'm back again."

The old woman disappeared, and a