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Melchior's Dream and Other Tales by Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
page 53 of 227 (23%)
the eldest, had reached that pinnacle of childish ambition--she was
"grown up."

A very good Marie she was, and always had been; from the days when she
ran to school with a little knapsack on her back, and her fair hair
hanging down in two long plaits, to the present time, when she
tenderly fastened that same knapsack on to the shoulders of a younger
sister; and when the plaits had for long been reclaimed from their
vagrant freedom, and coiled close to her head.

"Our Marie is not clever," said one of the children, who flattered
himself that _he was_ a bit of a genius; "our Marie is not clever, but
also she is never wrong."

It is with this same genius that our story has chiefly to do.

Friedrich was a child of unusual talent; a fact which, happily for
himself, was not discovered till he was more than twelve years old. He
learnt to read very quickly; and when he was once able, read every
book on which he could lay his hands, and in his father's house the
number was not great. When Marie was a child, the school was kept by a
certain old man, very gentle and learned in his quiet way. He had been
fond of his fair-haired pupil, and when she was no longer a scholar,
had passed many an odd hour in imparting to her a slight knowledge of
Latin, and of the great Linnæus' system of botany. He was now dead,
and his place filled by a less sympathizing pedagogue; and Friedrich
listened with envious ears to his more fortunate sister's stories of
her friend and master.

"So he taught you Latin--that great language! And botany--which is a
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