"What is your opinion concerning the origin of ideas?" asked the young man, at length, with great politeness.
Instantly the little face brightened with delighted intelligence; the lips became voluble in a strange language, and the dimpled hands caught at Carl's sunny locks.
"Oh! for an interpreter," he exclaimed. "If we had an interpreter, we could confound the savants. Clara," to his sister just returning, "what is this little wretch saying?"
"He is saying that he loves everybody in the whole world!" she cried, catching the babe in her arms, and half-stifling it with kisses. "And, now, please come to dinner."
"It is not a bad solution," mused the minister, as he and Carl went out last. "Perhaps love is the root from which our ideas grow. Undoubtedly the kind of ideas a person has depends on the nature and degree of his loving."
"You see that here we stand not upon the order of our going," Clara laughed back from the doorway; "or, rather, we follow the style of ecclesiastical processions, and place the principal person last."
There was a cluster of yellow violets by Mr. Griffeth's plate. His eyes often turned on them, and always with a grave expression. "They remind me of a brother I have lost," he said at length to Mrs. Yorke. "Philip used to paint flowers beautifully, and a bunch of yellow violets was the last thing he painted. If you were not new-comers in Seaton, I should think it possible that you might have seen or heard of him. He went to school here to an old minister, Mr. Blake, the predecessor, I believe, of Dr. Martin."
"Philip Griffeth!" Mrs. Yorke exclaimed, blushing with surprise, "Why, I went to school with him. I recollect him perfectly. This is my native place, Mr. Griffeth. Yes, Philip was the favorite of every one, teacher and pupils. He used to help me with my Virgil. Mr. Blake made us all study Latin, and the boys had to study Greek. The minister thought that no person should be admitted into polite society who did not know one at least of these languages. I recollect him, a small, pompous man, with an air of fierceness very foreign to his character. He wished to be thought a stern and fateful personage, while in truth he was the softest man alive. When he used to come to our house, and extend his awful right hand to me, I always knew that the left hand, hidden behind his back, held a paper of candy."
The discovery of this mutual friend formed a strong tie between the minister and his new acquaintances, so that they seemed quite like old friends. The family pressed him to stay till evening, when they would send for some of his people to come for him; and he, nothing loth, consented.