| 13.— | (A.) | Orphan-age. |
| (B.) | Book-worm. | |
| (C.) | Brim-stone. | |
| (D.) | Hare-bell. | |
| (E.) | Dove-tail. | |
| (F.) | Some-body. |
AVERAGE.
In old French, 'aver' meant a horse. So it did in old Scotch, which still has not a few French words in its dialect. Burns, in his 'Dream,' speaks of a horse as a 'noble aiver.'
In old times in Europe, a tenant was bound to do certain carting of grain or turf for the lord of the manor. In the yearly account this was set down as aver-age, or, as we might say, horse-age. The tenant had to strike a balance between his rent and his horse-work done, and this just proportion came to be known afterwards as average.
Average is a very difficult word to define. One day an Inspector asked a class what it meant. A little girl eagerly answered, 'What a hen lays eggs on.'
The Inspector was greatly surprised, but knowing that the child must have some reason for her answer, he asked her what made her think so, when she at once pointed to a sentence in her reading-book which said that 'a hen lays four or five eggs a week on an average.' The little girl evidently thought that an average was a mat or something of the kind, on which the hen deposited her eggs.