THE APPLE TREE GIRL
could stare around a room full of relations and whisper "Isn't she homely?"
For a long time she lay amid the ruins of her dreams, staring up into the dark, and with such a heavy feeling in her tender, young breast! As long as she could remember she had lived in a land of romance where all the men were handsome and all the maids were fair; and when she had dreamed of the future, as girls have dreamed since time immemorial, she had always imagined her prince riding along under the old Marlin elms, meeting her and falling in love with her at sight—suddenly stopping, his hand upon his heart—because she was so young and sweet and beautiful!
"And wouldn't it be awful now," she thought, almost sitting up in bed with the horror of it, "if no man ever looked at me because I'm homely, and if I had to live and die—a lonely old maid!"
Next morning Aunt Hepzibah came up to help her pack, for it had been de-
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