KING JOHN’S MESSENGER TOLD US TO MUFFLE OUR church bell until next Sunday, so Oliver has climbed the belfry and tied a kind of leather hood over the clapper of the church bell.
“Your father’s doves,” Oliver told me, “are so pea-brained they seem to think my belfry is their cote. They’ve painted the whole place white. The walls are streaming. And I had to be careful going up the steps because they’re so slippery.”
So when Oliver tolled the bell for Vespers this evening, it sounded very far away and lost in a thick fog.
“If memories had voices,” my mother said, “the sad ones would sound like muffled bells.”