THE APPLE TREE GIRL
paused, one shoe off and one shoe on, such an inspiration striking her that it brought a flush to her cheeks and a new brightness to her eye. "There!" she breathed to herself. "I do believe I've got it!"
She thought it over carefully, as though it were a problem in arithmetic or the syntax of a verb. "Yes," she whispered in exultation, "I do believe I've got the answer to my first Great Sum." She put on her other shoe, then, and went to her chair by the window—that same window where she used to sit and look at Micah's apple tree and the village below, and dream of Little Nell and Tiny Tim, and the beaus and belles who used to walk beneath the Marlin elms.
"Now!" she whispered. "Who are the only ones in Penfield that I really like?" She counted them on her fingers. "There's Aunt Grace. And Judge Darbie. And Mr. Chapman. And Miss
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