"It doesn't matter. I thought there might be a person with that name.--Don't you get very tired of this hum-drum life?" "But it isn't hum-drum in the least, except in bee-time, and on General-Training days." "Oh, Sophie! you know what I mean." "Well, I confess to liking a higher development of intellectual nature than I find in Redleaf, but I feel that I belong to it, I ought to be here; and feeling atones for much lack of mind,--it gets up higher, nearer into the soul. You know, Anna, we ought to love Redleaf. Look across that maple-grove." "What is there?" "Chimneys." "Well, what of them?" "There was smoke in them once,--smoke rising from our father's fires, you know, Anna." "But so long ago, one scarcely feels it." "Only sixteen years; we remember, you and I, the day the fires were put out." "Yes, I remember." "Don't you think we ought to love the place where our lives began, because our father lived here too?" "It's a sorry sort of obligation, to ought to love anything." "Even the graves, out there, in the church-yard?" "Yes, even them. I would rather love them through knowing something that some one tenant of them loved and suffered and achieved than to love them merely because they hold the mortal temples that once were columns in 'our family.' The world says we ought to love so much, and our hearts tell us we ought to love foolishly sometimes, and I say one oughtn't to love at all." "Anna! Anna!" "I haven't got any Aaron, Sophie, to teach me the 'ought-tos.'" There was a morsel of pity outgleaming from Sophie's eyes, as she went to obey a somewhat peremptory call. She needn't have bestowed it on me; I learned not to need it, yesterday. Satisfied that the tower wouldn't give me any more information, and that the visit of "the two" was the last for some time to come, I closed down my horizon of curiosity over the church-steeple, a little round, shingly spire with a vane,--too vain to tell which way the wind might chance to go. Ere Sophie came back to me, there was a bell-stroke from the belfry. She hurried down at the sound of it. "Will you come with me, Anna? Aaron wants to know who is dead." "Who rings the bell?" "The sexton, of course." We were within the vestibule before he had begun to toll the years. A little timidly, Sophie spoke,-- "Mr. Wilton wishes to know who has died." The uncivil fellow never turned an inch; he only started, when Sophie began to speak. I couldn't see his face. "Tell Mr. Wilton that my mother is dead, if he wishes to know." Sophie pulled my sleeve, and whispered, "Come away!"--and the man, standing there, began to toll the years of his mother's life. "Don't go," I said, outside; "_don't_ leave him without saying, 'I am sorry': you didn't even ask a question." "You wouldn't, if you knew the man." "Which I mean to do. You go on. I'll wait upon the step till he is done, and then I'll talk to him." "I wouldn't, Anna. But I must hurry. Aaron will go up at once."