Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1878-10-10
THE LITTLE SCHOOL
TEACHER.

Mother, you are making me misera-
ble-very miserable, indeed, and only
a month ago l was unutterably happy"
"Your misery is ephemeral, my dear
son. The time will come, perhaps,
when you will bless me for my interfe-
renee that now you consider unwise and
cruel"
The soft summer sun, delicately tenn
pered by clouds of pearl and gold,
would have shown on q pretty and
peaceful scene of nature only for the
human passion that marred it.
= On every side were green meadows,
thick with clover bloom, and fields of
wheat and corn yellowing in the sum-
In the center of the scene stood the Sew
erne homestead with its tall walls of
pale-grey stone, its lofty observatory
with glittering glass windows and its
shining, brazen weather-cock, and with
its wide, handsome portico, the slender
marble pillars of which were wound
with rare vines, heavy with sweet-scent-
ed flowers
From the broad, high parlor windows,
open to the balmy wind, and flung ajar
to the low, antiquely -concreted floor of
this portico came those earnest,
ed voices
In the middle of the room, in quaint
ly-cushioned chair sat Mrs. Severene-
proud, matronly-face6 lady, who was
swiftly nearing her three score years.
Her only child Leo, stood beside her.
He was the son of her youth, and the
pride of her long widowhood, and the
only reminder she jealously held of
her dead husband, except the fair and
goodly estate that lay so smllingly in
the summer sun.
Leo Severne was nearly forty, and
people marveled that he had remained
unmarried, whereas he was handsome
and winning, being superbly framed
and nobly featured, finely educated and
highly cultured, and had always been,
moreover, the favorite of all women.
"Why have you never taken wife,
Mr.. SeyerneY maid and matron had
asked him; surely so kind and amia
BILE man sho'd have done so long ago."
"When / meet a woman whom l can
love more than my mother, l shall mar
~ her if she will have me- the devoted
son would always reply.
But the question was never asked him
after dark-eyed Rossie Lynde had-come
to teach the unruly boys and mischiev-
Gus girls of the village school, for every
gossiping spy thereabout knew and
talked of the change that had come up
on him since that spring morning when
he had found her among the winter
greens on her way to the brick gothic
structure where she was expected to fill
young min6s with old book lore at the
rate of two dollars a head for term of
three months, and found her weeping
bitterly because among so many strang-
ers, no one seemed anything more than
strange. And all these watchful Cos
sips knew and talked about the gentle
way with which he had comforted her,
of how he had walked, and rode, and
sung with her, and of the great bouquets
of roses and lilies that he had sent to
qer.
''He is bewitched by that girl" said
the gossips, with comments that refined
senses shrink from hearing.
Perhaps none would have been hard
upon the friendless girl only for the
sneers of the rich and popular Mrs.
Leonie Chisholm, who was permanent
boarder at the Severne mansion, and
usually had her will with the aged
mother of the bachelor renegade.
"Mrss Chisholm would be lust the
match for Mr.. Severne," they assepted: