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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 78, April, 1864 by Various
page 50 of 282 (17%)
beg that such fancies may be brushed away, that all may be in readiness
to receive the true queen, who in due time will come to take possession
of her kingdom. For I will be honest with you, and not, like most
story-tellers, try to pull wool over your eyes all the way through. I
will say openly, that I did first see the girl who was afterwards my
wife in that cold little village of Norway. Cold it seems not to me now,
in the light of so many warm, sunshiny memories!

When my evening-school had been in operation a few weeks, I noticed, one
evening, at the end of the back-form on the girls' side a new face. The
owner of this new face was very quietly studying her book, a thin,
blue-covered book, Temple's Arithmetic. She was dressed in black,--not
fine, glossy black, but black that was gray, rusty, and well worn. A
very small silk handkerchief of the same color was drawn over her
shoulders and pinned where its two corners met her gown in front, making
a sort of triangle of whiteness,--some would say, "revealing a neck and
throat pure and white as a lily-leaf"; and they would say no more than
the truth, only I never like to put things in that way. Just so white
was her face. Her hair was black, soft, but not what the other girls
would have called smooth, or "slick." It was pulled away behind her
ears, and fixed up rather queerly in a great bunch behind, as if the
only aim were to get it out of the way. The upper part of her face was
the most striking,--the black eyebrows upon such a white, straight
forehead. I am rather particular in describing this new face,
because--well, perhaps because I remember it so distinctly. While I was
studying her as, I might perhaps say, a work 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
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