of Art, she suddenly raised her eyes, as people always do when they are watched.  I looked away in a hurry, though her eyes were just what I wanted to see more of, for they were splendid eyes.  “Splendid” is not the right word, though.  Deep, thoughtful, sorrowful, are the words which are floating about in my mind.  I wondered how she would look when animated, and watched, at recess, for some of the others to talk to her.

But she seemed one by herself.  While other girls chatted with their beaux, or whispered wonderful secrets, she remained sitting alone, now looking at her book, and now glancing around in a pitiful sort of way, that made me feel like going to speak to her.  In fact, as her teacher, I was bound to do this, and, true to the promptings of duty, I walked slowly down the alley.  As I paused by her side, she glanced up in my face.  I never forgot that look.  I might say that I never recovered from the effects of it.  I asked about her studies, and very willingly explained a sum over which she had stumbled.

After this, she came every evening, and it usually happened that it was most convenient for me to attend to her at recess.  Helping her in her sums was a pleasant thing to do, but in nothing was I more interested than in the writing-exercise.  I felt that I was indeed fortunate to be in duty bound to follow the movement of her charming little hand across the page, to teach her pretty fingers how to hold the pen; but then, if pleasure and duty would unite, how could I help it?  Then I had a way, all my own, of throwing looks sidelong at her face, while thus engaged; but sometimes my eyes would get so entangled in her long lashes, that I could hardly turn them away before she looked up.

Yet I never thought then of being in love with the girl.  Marriage was a subject upon which I had never seriously reflected.  Much as I liked to watch, to criticize pretty faces, I never had thought of taking one for my own.  I was like a good boy in a flower-garden, who looks about him with delight, admiring each beautiful blossom, but plucking none.  Not that I meant to live a bachelor; for, whenever I looked forward,—­an indefinite number of years,—­I invariably saw myself sitting by my own fireside, with a gentle-faced woman making pinafores near me, a cradle close by, and one or two chaps reading stories, or playing checkers with beans and buttons.  But this gentle maker of pinafores had never yet assumed a tangible shape.  She had only floated before me, in my lonely moments, enveloped in mist, and far too indistinct for revealing the color of the eyes and hair.  So I could not be in love with Rachel,—­her name was Rachel Lowe,—­only a sort of magnetism, as it would be called in these days, drew my eyes constantly that way.  I soon found, however, that it was impossible to watch her face with that indifference with which, as I have before stated, it had been my custom to regard female beauty.  Its peculiar expression puzzled me, and I kept trying to study it out.  Interesting, but dangerous study!  The difficulties of school-keeping are by no means fully appreciated.