as to ask why.

And so she watched him, half hoping, half expecting, he would confide in
her.

"I have been out of sorts, little girl," he said suddenly, with an
intuitive feeling that she expected an explanation of his silence; "and
as I told you this afternoon I took a long tramp to drive my mood away.
It did not do it, but something else has, and that was your church
bells."

"I am very glad," she responded with sudden interest, "I wish they would
ring every evening."

"Yes," he continued, not heeding her delicate sympathy, "they have
carried me back to my boyhood and the country village near where I was
born. I wish I could go back to those days and feel as I did then," he
added, a little sadly, "but one can't. Life and its ambitions sweep us
on, and youth is forgotten or returns only in thought. If one could only
feel the keen zest of youth and enjoy small pleasures as children do,
all through life, it would be worth living. I should be grateful if I
were as happy and care-free as you are, Mona."

"I am not very happy," she answered simply. "Did you think I was?"

"You ought to be," he asserted; "you have nothing to worry about unless
it is your ambition to become a great artist, and as I have told you,
you had better put that out of your thoughts. You could be, but it
would bring you more heartaches than you can imagine. Put it away, Mona,
and live your simple life here. To struggle out of your orbit is to
court unhappiness. I was thrust out of mine by death and poverty," he
added sadly, "when an awkward and green country boy, knowing absolutely
nothing of city ways and manners, and placed among those who think all
who come from the farms must be but half civilized and stupid. It is the
shallow conceit of city-bred people always and the greatest mistake they
make. My aunt sent me to a business college, and for a year my life
there was a burden. The other fellows made game of my clothes, my
opinions, and, worse than that, a jest of all the moral ideas in which
my good mother had instructed me. Later on, when I began to get out into
the world, I found the same disposition to sneer at all that is pure and
good in life. The young men I became acquainted with called me a
goody-good because I acted according to conscience and refused to drink
or gamble. They seemed to take a pride in their ability to pour down
glass after glass of fiery liquor, and when I asserted that to visit
gambling dens and all other resort