It was very odd and strange to me, my new home in the great, busy
city; with its huge rows of stores and houses, its myriad restless
feet, and anxious, care-worn faces; its glittering wealth, its squalid
poverty; the slow moving hearse, and the laughing harlequin crowd;
its noisy Sabbaths, and its gorgeous churches, with its jeweled
worshippers, and its sleepy priests; its little children, worldly-wise
and old, and its never-ceasing, busy hum, late into the day’s pale
light. I had no acquaintances: I needed none; for I moved about my
pretty little home as in a glad dream. My husband was still “Master
Grey,” but over a private school of his own, bounded by no “District,”
subject to the despotic dictation of no “Committee.” In his necessary
absence, I busied myself in arranging and re-arranging his books,
papers and wardrobe, thinking the while such _glad_ thoughts! And when
the little mantel clock chimed the hour of return, my cheek flushed, my
heart beat quick, and my eyes grew moist with happy tears, at the sound
of the dear, loved footstep.
How very nice it seemed to sit at the head of that cheerful little
table--to make, with my own hands, the fragrant cup of tea--to grow
merry with my husband, over crest-fallen Zeb, and poor, stubborn little
Bessie, and my uncle’s time-worn bug-bear of a memorandum book!
And how proud I was of him, as he sat there correcting some
school-boy’s Greek exercise, while I leaned over his shoulder,
looking attentively at his fine face, and at those unintelligible
hieroglyphics, and blushing that he was so much wiser than his little
Hetty.
This thought sometimes troubled me. I asked myself, will my husband
never weary of me? I even grew jealous of his favorite authors, of whom
he was so fond. Then I pondered the feasibility of pursuing a course of
reading unknown to him, and astonishing him some day with my profound
erudition. In pursuance of my plan, I would sit demurely down to some
great, wise book; but I saw only my husband’s face looking out at me
from every page, and my self-inflicted task was sure to end in some
blissful dreamy reverie, with which Cupid had much more to do than
Minerva.