The next morning, between eight and nine o’clock, as I was on my way to school, I met the travelling carriage of Capt. Thompson, which was taking the newly married couple to the dépôt. John was driving, while on the back seat, with his arm partly around his bride, was the doctor. My first impulse was not to look at them, but this act _pride_ forbade, and very civilly I returned the nod of Dell, and the polite bow of the doctor, whose face turned crimson when he saw me. A moment more, and a turn of the road hid them from my view; then seating myself upon a large flat stone, beneath a tree, where were the remains of a _play-house_ built by my own hands only the autumn before, I cried out loud, thinking myself the most wretched of beings, and wondering if ever any one before had such trouble as I! As nearly as I am able to judge, I was taking my first lesson in _love-sickness_; a kind of disease which is seldom dangerous, but, like the toothache, very disagreeable while it lasts. At least I found it so, and for weeks I pined away with a kind of sentimental melancholy, which now appears to me wholly foolish and ridiculous; for were I indeed the wife of Dr. Clayton, instead of Rosa Lee, this book would undoubtedly never have been written; while in place of bending over the inkstand this stormy morning, as I am doing, I should probably have been engaged in washing, dressing, scolding, and cuffing three or four little Claytons, or in the still more laudable employment of darning the _socks_ and mending the _trousers_ (a thing, by the way, which I can’t do) of said little Claytons’ sire; who, by this time, would, perhaps, have ceased to call me “his Rose,” bestowing upon me the less euphonious title of “she,” or “my woman?” But not thus did I reason then. I only knew that I had lost him and was very unhappy. Many a long walk I took alone in the shadowy woods, singing to myself snatches of love-songs, particularly the one containing the following: “I have not loved lightly— I’ll think of thee yet, And I’ll pray for thee nightly. Till life’s sun is set.”