"Oh, yes,--and I'm not afraid at all. I can go out to the farthest edge, where other heads would feel the motion of the earth, perhaps, and I stand firm as though the north-pole were my support."
"That is just it," replied I. "Now it puts all my fear in action, and imagination works indescribable horrors in my mind, to stand even upon a moderate elevation, or to see a little child take the first steps at the head of a staircase; and I think it would be the height of cruelty for you to go and stand where it gave me such pain."
"I wouldn't do it knowingly,"--and the blue in Sophie's eyes was misty as she spoke.
"How did you feel about my going into the tower a few moments ago?"
"As you would, if you saw me on a jutting rock over the age-chiselled chasm at Niagara."
"Thus I felt that it would be wrong to go in, though I had no fear. But you will go with me, perhaps, this afternoon; I can't quite give up my devotion."
"If Aaron can't, I will," she said; but a bit of pallor whitened her face as she promised.
I thoroughly hate ghosts. There is an antagonism between mystery and me. My organs of hearing have been defended by the willingest of fingers, from my childhood, against the slightest approach of the appearance or the actions of one, as pictured in description. I think I'm afraid. But in the mid-day flood of sunlight, and the great sweep of air that enveloped my tower, standing very near to the church, where good words only were spoken, and where prayers were prayed by true-hearted people, why should my cool-browed sister Sophie deter me from a pleasure simple and true, one that I had grown to like, weaving fancies where I best pleased? I asked myself this question, with a current of impatience flowing beneath it, as I waited for Sophie to finish the "sewing-society work," which must go to Deacon Downs's before two of the clock.
I know she did not hasten. I know she wished for an interruption; but none came. The work-basket was duly sent off, whither Sophie soon must follow; for her hands, and her good, true heart, were both in the work she had taken up to do. Sophie won't lay it down discouraged; she sees plains of verdure away on,--a sort of mirage of the mind. I cannot. It is not given unto me.
I had prepared the way to open the door of the tower when Aaron interrupted me in the morning. I didn't keep Sophie standing long in the wind, but she was trembling when I said,--