“I have never heard the chimes,” she said.  “They have not played since I came to Church Leet.”

“They are to play this year,” said Harry Carradyne.  “But I don’t think my mother knows it.”

“Is it true that Mrs. Carradyne does not like to hear the chimes?  I seem to have gathered the idea, somehow,” added Alice.  But she received no answer.

Kate Dancox was changeable as the ever-shifting sea.  Delighted with the frock that was in process, she extended her approbation to its maker; and when Mrs. Ram, a homely workwoman, departed with her small bundle in her arms, it pleased the young lady to say she would attend her to her home.  This involved the attendance of Miss West, who now found herself summoned to the charge.

Having escorted Mrs. Ram to her lowly door, and had innumerable intricate questions answered touching trimmings and fringes, Miss Kate Dancox, disregarding her governess altogether, flew back along the road with all the speed of her active limbs, and disappeared within the churchyard.  At first Alice, who was growing tired and followed slowly, could not see her; presently, a desperate shriek guided her to an unfrequented corner where the graves were crowded.  Miss Kate had come to grief in jumping over a tombstone, and bruised both her knees.

“There!” exclaimed Alice, sitting down on the stump of an old tree, close to the low wall.  “You’ve hurt yourself now.”

“Oh, it’s nothing,” returned Kate, who did not make much of smarts.  And she went limping away to Mr. Grame, then doing some light work in his garden.

Alice sat on where she was, reading the inscription on the tombstones; some of them so faint with time as to be hardly discernible.  While standing up to make out one that seemed of a rather better class than the rest, she observed Nancy Cale, the clerk’s wife, sitting in the church-porch and watching her attentively.  The poor old woman had been ill for a long time, and Alice was surprised to see her out.  Leaving the inscriptions, she went across the churchyard.

“Ay, my dear young lady, I be up again, and thankful enough to say it; and I thought as the day’s so fine, I’d step out a bit,” she said, in answer to the salutation.  An intelligent woman, and quite sufficiently cultivated for her work—­cleaning the church and washing the parson’s surplices.  “I thought John was in the church here, and came to speak to him; but he’s not, I find; the door’s locked.”

“I saw John down by Mrs. Ram’s just now; he was talking to Nott, the carpenter,” observed Alice.  “Nancy, I was trying to make out some of those old names; but it is difficult to do so,” she added, pointing to the crowded corner.

“Ay, I see, my dear,” nodded Nancy. “His be worn a’most right off.  I think I’d have it done again, an’ I was you.”

“Have what done again?”

“The name upon your poor papa’s gravestone.”

“The what?” exclaimed Alice.  And Nancy repeated her words.