My Three Mysteries

by Rosella Rice 

We were betrothed—William and I. I never called him William before; he never heard my lips speak his name. I called him Teacher. He was educating himself for the law, and, as all poor students do, taught school occasionally to eke out his means.  

I was one of his pupils, and don’t know how he came to love me—a sunburnt, robust country girl, awkward and motherless, and starving for the books that were out of my poor reach.  

He never seemed like other men—he was purer and higher, and his soul was as white as any baby’s soul.

I often feel my eyes twinkle with a laugh and catch my breath suddenly as I remember the weeks when, “boarding round,” he was at my home. 

In the evenings we would gather around the broad hearth, and sit on the rug and crack nuts, and when weary of that, would fall into the pleasant dreamy pastime of seeing pictures in the embers. He would sit in the shadow of the jamb, and his forehead would gleam out whitely from the coarse gray background. 

He would read every night after the family had retired, and I was delighted to sit on a low stool on the other side of the stand and read Childe Harold and Mrs. Hemans’ poems. This was an indulgence seldom accorded to me when alone.  

When my bed-time came, I went out softly on tip-toe, and I left the teacher reading. There was no good-night kiss; my shy, brown hand never rested a minute among his bright locks: we called ourselves old-fashioned, and though we loved each other in a strange, quiet way, we made no demonstrations of it. He… Read More