I repeat it, to be matter of profound
astonishment and intense wonder, that Nathaniel Pipkin should
have had the temerity to cast his eyes in this direction. But love is
blind; and Nathaniel had a cast in his eye; and perhaps these two
circumstances, taken together, prevented his seeing the matter in
its proper light.
'Now, if old Lobbs had entertained the most remote or distant
idea of the state of the affections of Nathaniel Pipkin, he would
just have razed the school-room to the ground, or exterminated
its master from the surface of the earth, or committed some other
outrage and atrocity of an equally ferocious and violent description;
for he was a terrible old fellow, was Lobbs, when his pride
was injured, or his blood was up. Swear! Such trains of oaths
would come rolling and pealing over the way, sometimes, when
he was denouncing the idleness of the bony apprentice with the
thin legs, that Nathaniel Pipkin would shake in his shoes with
horror, and the hair of the pupils' heads would stand on end
with fright.
'Well! Day after day, when school was over, and the pupils
gone, did Nathaniel Pipkin sit himself down at the front window,
and, while he feigned to be reading a book, throw sidelong glances
over the way in search of the bright eyes of Maria Lobbs; and he
hadn't sat there many days, before the bright eyes appeared at an
upper window, apparently deeply engaged in reading too.
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