Except for daughters of nobility and the local well-educated housewife who ran the ‘petty school’ for young boys, a girl’s education was not encouraged in Elizabethan England. Nonetheless, though this teacher’s bell may be momentarily silenced, her desire to teach clearly is not. While her “petty” school sits off in the distant village, she has “crossed the bridge.” She has chosen to teach a girl how to read. Hopefully, far from the eyes of a closed society and cloaked in natural greenery with budding color, both the teacher’s heart and the student’s mind may begin to flower. The girl is also “crossing the bridge,” the bridge to enlightenment and again the opportunity to teach anew, to open her heart. The young man in the painting, the best of his gender, fittingly also wears a garland of flowers. He is the consummate hope in a society that will ultimately flourish in direct proportion to the freedom it allows for its gentler sex.