For long hours I did mightily wish she would speak.

And at last she did; the red lips parted, and out leaps her thought--and with such a guileless and pretty enthusiasm, too: "Auntie, I just KNOW I've got five hundred fleas on me!" That was probably over the average.

Yes, it must have been very much over the average.

The average at that time in the Grand Duchy of Baden was forty-five to a young person (when alone), according to the official estimate of the home secretary for that year; the average for older people was shifty and indeterminable, for whenever a wholesome young girl came into the presence of her elders she immediately lowered their average and raised her own.

She became a sort of contribution-box.
This dear young thing in the theater had been sitting there unconsciously taking up a collection.