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 jewelled 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 bugbear 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 favourite 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.