and must say that my own leaning is towards youth.

Remembering the desire of the poor widow, that Rachel should be "made
of," I continued to walk home with her from evening-school, and to pay
her many little attentions, even after I had left the Squire's. The
widow was right in saying, that, when folks saw that I "set store" by
her, they would open their eyes. They did,--in wonder that "the
schoolmaster should be so attentive to Rachel Lowe!" We were
"town-talk." I often, in the school-house entry, overheard the scholars
joking about us; and once I saw them slyly writing our names together on
the bricks of the fireplace. Everybody was on the look-out for what
might happen.

One evening, in school-time, I stood a long while leaning over her desk,
working out for her a difficult sum. On observing me change my position,
to rest myself, she, very naturally, and almost unconsciously, moved for
me to sit down, and I took a seat beside her, going on, all the while,
with my ciphering. Happening to look up suddenly, I saw that half the
school were watching us. I kept my seat with calmness, though I knew I
turned red. I glanced at Rachel, and really pitied her, she looked so
distressed, so conscious. That night she hurried home before I had put
away my books, and for several evenings did not appear.

But if she could do without me, I could not do without her. I missed her
face there at the end of the back-seat. I missed the walk home with her:
I had grown to depend upon it. She was just getting willing to talk, and
in what she said and the way she said it, in the tone of her voice and
in her whole manner, there was something to me extremely bewitching. She
had been strangely brought up, was familiar with books, but, having
received no regular education, fancied herself ignorant, and different