THE APPLE TREE GIRL
thing you do is a sort of sum. If you do it right you get the proper answer, and if you do it wrong you fail. Yes, when you look at it that way, I guess a person's whole life is a sort of sum, but you have to die to know the answer. Oh, if I could only think of a sum that would make me famous all over the world!"
After that, whenever Charlotte made up her mind to do anything difficult, she would say, "I'm going to set myself a sum," and if it was hard to do, such as taking no notice of Margaret's meanness, or memorizing Himmel und Erde in her German reader, she would say to herself: "I can do it—I can do it if I'm smart!" And she always did it, because as she always solemnly told herself: "I've got to be smart, or I'm nothing."
So it isn't surprising that, at the end of her freshman year, she stood at the head of her class, while Margaret hovered perilously near the foot. This situa-
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