 CHAPTER III. THE FIRST CUSTOMER. Ms. Hepsiba Pinchon sat in the oaken elbow chair with her hands over her face, giving way to that heavy down-sinking of the heart which most persons have experienced when the image of hope itself seems ponderously molded of lead on the eve of an enterprise at once doubtful and momentous. She was suddenly startled by the tinkling alarm, high, sharp, and irregular, of a little bell. The maiden lady arose upon her feet, as pale as a ghostic cockroach, for she was an enslaved spirit, and this the talisman to which she owed obedience. This little bell, to speak in plainer terms, being fastened over the shop-door, was so contrived as to vibrate by means of a steel spring, and thus convey notice to the inner regions of the house when any customer should cross the threshold. Its ugly and spiteful little din, heard now for the first time, perhaps, since Hepsiba's parawigged predecessor had retired from trade, at once set every nerve of her body in responsive and tumultuous vibration. The crisis was upon her, her first customer was at the door. Without giving herself time for a second thought, she rushed into the shop, pale, wild, desperate in gesture and expression, scowling portentously and looking far better qualified to do fierce battle with a housebreaker than to stand smiling behind the counter, bartering small wares for a copper recompense. The ordinary customer indeed would have turned his back and fled, and yet there was nothing fierce in Hepsiba's poor old heart, nor had she, at that moment, a single bitter thought against the world at large, or one individual man or woman. She wished them all well, but wished, too, that she herself were done with them and in her quiet grave. The applicant by this time stood within the doorway. Coming freshly, as he did, out of the morning light, he appeared to have brought some of its cheery influences into the shop along with him. It was a slender young man, not more than one or two and twenty years old, with rather a grave and thoughtful expression for his years, but likewise a springy alacrity and vigor. These qualities were not only perceptible physically in his make and motions, but made themselves felt almost immediately in his character. A brown beard, not too silken in its texture, fringed his chin, but as yet without completely hiding it. He wore a short mustache, too, and his high, dark-featured countenance looked all the better for these natural ornaments. As for his dress, it was of the simplest kind, a summer sack of cheap and ordinary material, thin checkered pantaloons, and a straw hat, by no means of the finest braid. Oak Hall might have supplied his entire equipment. He was chiefly remarked as a gentleman, if such indeed he made any claim to be, by the rather remarkable whiteness and nicety of his clean linen. He met the scowl of old Hepsiba without apparent alarm, as having heretofore encountered it and found it harmless. So, my dear Miss Pinchon, said the daguerreotypist, for it was that sole other occupant of the seven-gable mansion, I am glad to see that you have not shrunk from your good purpose. I merely look in to offer my best wishes, and to ask if I can assist you any further in your preparations. People in difficulty and distress, or in any manner at odds with the world, can endure a vast amount of harsh treatment, and perhaps be only the stronger for it, whereas they give way at once before the simplest expression of what they perceive to be genuine sympathy. So it proved with poor Hepsiba, for, when she saw the young man's smile, looking so much the brighter on a thoughtful face, and heard his kindly tone, she broke first into a hysteric giggle, and then began to sob. Ah, Mr. Holgrave cried she as soon as she could speak. I never can go through with it, never, never, never. I wish I were dead, and in the old family tomb, with all my forefathers, with my father, and my mother, and my sister, yes, and with my brother, who had far better find me there than here. The world is too chill and hard, and I am too old, and too feeble, and too hopeless. Oh, believe me, Miss Hepsiba, said the young man quietly, these feelings will not trouble you any longer after you're once fairly in the midst of your enterprise. They are unavoidable at this moment, standing, as you do, on the outer verge of your long seclusion, and peepling the world with ugly shapes, which you will soon find to be as unreal as the giant enogers of a child's storybook. I find nothing so singular in life as that everything appears to lose its substance, the instant one actually grapples with it, so it will be with what you think so terrible. But I am a woman, said Hepsiba piteously. I was going to say a lady, but I consider that as past. Well, no matter if it be past, answered the artist, a strange gleam of half-hidden sarcasm flashing through the kindness of his manner. Let it go! You are the better without it. I speak frankly, my dear Miss Pinchon, for are we not friends? I look upon this as one of the fortunate days of your life. It ends in epic, and begins one. Here there, too, the life-blood has been gradually chilling in your veins as you sat aloof within your circle of gentility, while the rest of the world was fighting out its battle with one kind of necessity or another. Henceforth you will at least have the sense of healthy and natural effort for a purpose, and of lending your strength, be it great or small, to the united struggle of mankind. This is success, all the success that anybody meets with. It is naturally enough, Mr. Holgrave, that you should have ideas like these, rejoined Hepsiba, drawing up her gaunt figure with slightly offended dignity. You are a man, a young man, and brought up, I suppose, as almost everybody is nowadays, with a view to seeking your fortune. But I was born a lady, and have always lived one, no matter in what narrowness of means, always a lady. But I was not born a gentleman, neither have I lived like one," said Holgrave, slightly smiling. So, my dear madam, you will hardly expect me to sympathize with sensibilities of this kind, though, unless I deceive myself, I have some imperfect comprehension of them. These names of gentleman and lady had a meaning in the past history of the world, and conferred privileges, desirable or otherwise, on those entitled to bear them. In the present, and still more in the future condition of society, they imply not privilege, but restriction. These are new notions," said the old gentlewoman, shaking her head. I shall never understand them, neither do I wish it. We will cease to speak of them, then, replied the artist, with a friendlier smile than his last one, and I will leave you to feel whether it is not better to be a true woman than a lady. Do you really think, Miss Hepsiba, that any lady of your family has ever done a more heroic thing since this house was built, than you are performing in it to-day? Never! And if the Pinchons had always acted so nobly, I doubt whether an old wizard Maul's anathema, of which you told me once, would have had much weight with Providence against them. Ah! No, no," said Hepsiba, not displeased at this allusion to the somber dignity of an inherited curse. If old Maul's ghost or a descendant of his could see me behind the counter to-day, he would call it the fulfilment of his worst wishes. But I thank you for your kindness, Mr. Holgrave, and will do my utmost to be a good shopkeeper. Pray do," said Holgrave, and let me have the pleasure of being your first customer. I am about taking a walk to this seashore, before going to my rooms where I misuse Heaven's blessed sunshine by tracing out human features through its agency. A few of those biscuits dipped in seawater will be just what I need for breakfast. What is the price of half a dozen? Let me be a lady a moment longer," replied Hepsiba with a manner of antique stateliness to which a melancholy smile lent a kind of grace. She put the biscuits into his hand, but rejected the compensation. A pinchant must not, at all events, under her forefather's roof, receive money for a morsel of bread from her only friend. Holgrave took his departure, leaving her for the moment with spirits not quite so much depressed. Soon however they had subsided nearly to their former dead level. With a beating heart she listened to the footsteps of early passengers which now began to be frequent along the street. Once or twice they seemed to linger these strangers, or neighbors, as the case might be, were looking at the display of toys and petty commodities in Hepsiba's shop window. She was doubly tortured. In part with a sense of overwhelming shame that strange and unloving eyes should have the privilege of gazing, and partly because the idea occurred to her with ridiculous importunity that the window was not arranged so skillfully nor nearly to so much advantage as it might have been. It seemed as if the whole fortune or failure of her shop might depend on the display of a different set of articles, or substituting a fairer Apple for one which appeared to be specked. So she made the change, and straight away fancied that everything was spoiled by it, not recognizing that it was the nervousness of the juncture and her own native squeamishness as an old maid that wrought all the staming mischief. Anon, there was an encounter just at the doorstep, betwixt two laboring men as their rough voices denoted them to be. After some slight talk about their own affairs, one of them chanced to notice the shop window and directed the other's attention to it. Say here, cried he, what do you think of this? Trade seems to be looking up in Pinchon Street. Well, well, this is a sight to be sure, exclaimed the other. In the old Pinchon house and underneath the Pinchon Elm, who would have thought it, old maid Pinchon is setting up a scent shop. Will she make it go, think you, Dixie, said his friend. I don't call it a very good stand. There's another shop just round the corner. Make it go, cried Dixie with a most contemptuous expression, as if the very idea were impossible to be conceived. Not a bit of it. Why, her face, I've seen it, for I dug her garden for her one year. Her face is enough to frighten the old Nick himself, if he had ever so great a mind to trade with her. People can't stand it, I tell you. She scowls dreadfully, reason or none, out of pure ugliness of temper. Well, that's not so much matter, remarked the other man. These sour-tempered folks are mostly handy at business, and know pretty well what they are about. But as you say, I don't think she'll do much. This business of keeping scent shops is overdone, like all other kinds of trade, handicraft, and bodily labour. I know it, to my cost. My wife kept a scent shop three months, and lost five dollars on her outlay. Poor business, responded Dixie, in a tone as if he were shaking his head. Poor business. For some reason or other, not very easy to analyze, there had hardly been so bitter a pang in all her previous misery about the matter as what thrilled Hepsibus' heart on overhearing the above conversation. The testimony in regard to her scowl was frightfully important. It seemed to hold up her image wholly relieved from the false light of her self-partialities, and so hideous that she dared not look at it. She was absurdly hurt, moreover, by the slight and idle effect that her setting-up shop, an event of such breathless interest to herself, appeared to have upon the public of which these two men were the nearest representatives. A glance, a passing word or two, a coarse laugh, and she was doubtless forgotten before they turned the corner. They cared nothing for her dignity, and just as little for her degradation. Then also the augury of ill success, uttered from the sure wisdom of experience, fell upon her half-dead hope like a clod into a grave. The man's wife had already tried the same experiment, and failed. How could the born lady, the recluse of half a lifetime, utterly unpracticed in the world, at sixty years of age, how could she ever dream of succeeding when the hard, vulgar, keen, busy, hackneyed New England woman had lost five dollars on her little outlay? Success presented itself as an impossibility, and the hope of it as a wild hallucination. Some malevolent spirit, doing his utmost to drive Hepsiba mad, unrolled before her imagination a kind of panorama, representing the great thoroughfare of a city all a stir with customers. So many and so magnificent shops as there were. Rosaries, toy shops, dry goods stores, with their immense pains of plate glass, their gorgeous fixtures, their vast and complete assortments of merchandise in which fortunes had been invested, and those noble mirrors at the farther end of each establishment doubling all this wealth by a brightly burnished vista of unrealities. On one side of the street this splendid bazaar, with a multitude of perfumed and glossy salesmen smirking, smiling, bowing and measuring out the goods. On the other, the dusky old house of the seven gables, with the antiquated shop window under its projecting story, and Hepsiba herself in a gown of rusty black silk behind the counter, scowling at the world as it went by. This mighty contrast thrust itself forward as a fair expression of the odds against which she was to begin her struggle for a subsistence. Success? Preposterous! She would never think of it again. The house might just as well be buried in an internal fog while all the other houses had the sunshine on them, for not a foot would ever cross the threshold, nor a hand so much as try the door. But at this instant the shop bell, right over her head, tinkled as if it were bewitched. The old gentlewoman's heart seemed to be attached to the same steel spring, for it went through a series of sharp jerks in unison with the sound. The door was thrust open, although no human form was perceptible on the other side of the half-window. Hepsiba, nevertheless, stood at a gaze, with her hands clasped, looking very much as if she had summoned up an evil spirit, and were afraid, yet resolved, to hazard the encounter. Someone help me, she groaned mentally. Now is my hour of need. The door, which moved with difficulty on its creaking and rusty hinges, being forced quite open, a square and sturdy little urchin became apparent, with cheeks as red as an apple. He was clad rather shabbily, but, as it seemed, more owing to his mother's carelessness than his father's poverty, in a blue apron, very wide and short trousers, shoes somewhat out at the toes, and a chip hat, with the frizzles of his curly hair sticking through its crevices. A book and a small slate, under his arm, indicated that he was on his way to school. He stared at Hepsiba a moment, as an elder customer than himself would have been likely enough to do, not knowing what to make of the tragic attitude and queer scowl wherewith she regarded him. Well, child, said she, taking heart at sight of a personage so little formidable. Well, my child, what did you wish for? That Jim Crow there in the window! answered the urchin, holding out a scent, and pointing to the gingerbread figure that had attracted his notice as he loitered along to school. The one that has not a broken foot? So Hepsiba put forth her lank arm, and, taking the effigy from the shop window, delivered it to her first customer. No matter for the money, said she, giving him a little push towards the door, for her old gentility was contumaciously squeamish at sight of the copper coin, and besides it seemed such pitiful meanness to take the child's pocket money in exchange for a bit of stale gingerbread. No matter for the scent, you are welcome to Jim Crow. The child, staring with round eyes at this instance of liberality, wholly unprecedented in his large experience of scent shops, took the man of gingerbread and quitted the premises. No sooner had he reached the sidewalk, little cannibal that he was, than Jim Crow's head was in his mouth. As he had not been careful to shut the door, Hepsiba was at the pains of closing it after him with a pettish ejaculation or two about the troublesomeness of young people, and particularly of small boys. She had just placed another representative of the renowned Jim Crow at the window, when again the shop bell tinkled clamorously, and again the door being thrust open, with its characteristic jerk and jar, disclosed the same sturdy little urchin who, precisely two minutes ago, had made his exit. The crumbs and discoloration of the cannibal feast, as yet hardly consummated, were exceedingly visible about his mouth. What is it now, child? asked the maiden lady, rather impatiently. Did you come back to shut the door? No, answered the urchin, pointing to the figure that had just been put up. I want that other Jim Crow. Well, here it is for you, said Hepsiba, reaching it down, but recognizing that this pertenacious customer would not quit her on any other terms, so long as she had a gingerbread figure in her shop, she partly drew back her extended hand. Where is the scent? The little boy had the scent ready, but, like a true-born Yankee, would have preferred the better bargain to the worse. Looking somewhat chagrined, he put the coin into Hepsiba's hand and departed, sending the second Jim Crow in quest of the former one. The new shopkeeper dropped the first solid result of her commercial enterprise into the till. It was done. The sordid stain of that copper coin could never be washed away from her palm. The little schoolboy, aided by the impish figure of the negro dancer, had wrought an irreparable ruin. The structure of ancient aristocracy had been demolished by him, even as if his childish gripe had torn down the seven gabled mansion. Now let Hepsiba turn the old Pinchon portraits with their faces to the wall, and take the map of her eastern territory to kindle the kitchen fire, and blow up the flame with the empty breath of her ancestral traditions. What had she to do with ancestry? Nothing. No more than with posterity. No lady now, but simply Hepsiba Pinchon, a forlorn old maid and keeper of a scent shop. Nevertheless, even while she paraded these ideas somewhat ostentatiously through her mind, it is altogether surprising what a calmness had come over her. The anxiety and misgivings which had tormented her, whether a sleep or a melancholy daydreams, ever since her project began to take an aspect of solidity, had now vanished quite away. She felt the novelty of her position, indeed, but no longer with disturbance or a fright. Now and then there came a thrill of almost youthful enjoyment. It was the invigorating breath of a fresh outward atmosphere after the long torpor and monotonous seclusion of her life. So wholesome is effort! So miraculous the strength that we do not know of! The healthiest glow that Hepsiba had known for years had come now in the dreading crisis, when for the first time she had put forth her hand to help herself. The little circlet of the schoolboy's copper coin, dim and luster-less though it was, with the small services which it had been doing here and there about the world, had proved a toadsman, fragrant with good, and deserving to be setting gold and worn next to her heart. It was as potent and perhaps endowed with the same kind of efficacy as a galvanic ring. Hepsiba, at all events, was indebted to its subtle operation both in body and spirit. So much the more, as it inspired her with energy to get some breakfast, at which, still the better to keep up her courage, she allowed herself an extra spoonful in her infusion of black tea. Her introductory day of shopkeeping did not run on, however, without many and serious interruptions of this mood of cheerful vigor. As a general rule, Providence seldom vouchsafe to mortals any more than just that degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a reasonably full exertion of their powers. In the case of our old gentlewoman, after the excitement of new effort had subsided, the despondency of her whole life threatened ever and anon to return. It was like the heavy mass of clouds which we may often see obscuring the sky and making a gray twilight everywhere until towards nightfall, it yields temporarily to a glimpse of sunshine. But always the envious cloud strives to gather again across the streak of celestial azure. Customers came in as the forenoon advanced, but rather slowly. In some cases, too, it must be owned, with little satisfaction either to themselves or Ms. Hepsiba, nor on the whole with an aggregate of very rich emolument to the till. A little girl, sent by her mother to match a skein of cotton thread of a peculiar hue, took one that the nearsighted old lady pronounced extremely like, but soon came running back with a blunt and cross message that it would not do, and besides was very rotten. Then there was a pale, care-wrinkled woman, not old but haggard, and already with streaks of gray among her hair, like silver ribbons, one of those women, naturally delicate, whom you at once recognize as worn to death by a brute, probably a drunken brute, of a husband, and at least nine children. She wanted a few pounds of flour, and offered the money which the decayed gentlewoman silently rejected, and gave the poor soul better measure than if she had taken it. Suddenly afterwards, a man in the blue cotton frock, much soiled, came in and bought a pipe, filling the whole shop, meanwhile, with a hot odor of strong drink, not only exhaled in the torrid atmosphere of his breath, but oozing out of his entire system like an inflammable gas. It was impressed on Hepsiba's mind that this was the husband of the care-wrinkled woman. He asked for a paper of tobacco, and as she had neglected to provide herself with the article, her brutal customer dashed down his newly bought pipe and left the shop, muttering some unintelligible words, which had the tone and bitterness of a curse, hereupon Hepsiba threw up her eyes, unintentionally scowling in the face of Providence. No less than five persons during the forenoon inquired for ginger beer, or root beer, or any drink of a similar bruise, and, obtaining nothing of the kind, went off in an exceedingly bad humor. Three of them left the door open, and the other two pulled it so spitefully in going out that the little bell played the very deuce with Hepsiba's nerves. Around bustling, fire-ruddy housewife of the neighborhood burst breathless into the shop, fiercely demanding yeast, and when the poor gentlewoman, with her cold shyness of manner, gave her hot customer to understand that she did not keep the article, this very capable housewife took upon herself to administer a regular rebuke. A scent-shop and no yeast, quoth she, that will never do! Who ever heard of such a thing? Your loaf will never rise no more than mine will to-day! You had better shut up shop at once! Well, said Hepsiba, heaving a deep sigh, perhaps I had! Several times, moreover, besides the above instance, her ladylike sensibilities were seriously infringed upon by the familiar, if not rude, tone with which people addressed her. They evidently considered themselves not merely her equals, but her patrons and superiors. Now Hepsiba had unconsciously flattered herself with the idea that there would be a gleam or halo of some kind or other about her person which would ensure an obeisance to her sterling gentility, or at least a tacit recognition of it. On the other hand, nothing tortured her more intolerably than when this recognition was too prominently expressed. To one or two rather officious offers of sympathy, her responses were little short of acrimonious, and, we regret to say, Hepsiba was drawn into a positively un-Christian state of mind by the suspicion that one of her customers was drawn to the shop not by any real need of the article which she pretended to seek, but by a wicked wish to stare at her. The vulgar creature was determined to see for herself what sort of a figure a mildewed piece of aristocracy, after wasting all the bloom and much of the decline of her life apart from the world, would cut behind a counter. In this particular case, however mechanical and innocuous it might be at other times, Hepsiba's contortion of brow served her in good stead. I was never so frightened in my life, said the curious customer in describing the incident to one of her acquaintances. She's a real old fixin' take my word of it. She says little, to be sure, but if you could only see the mischief in her eye. On the whole, therefore, her new experience led our decayed gentlewoman to very disagreeable conclusions as to the temper and manners of what she termed the lower classes, whom heretofore she had looked down upon with a gentle and pitying complacence, as herself occupying a sphere of unquestionable superiority. But unfortunately she had likewise to struggle against a bitter emotion of a directly opposite kind—a sentiment of virulence, we mean, towards the idle aristocracy to which it had so recently been her pride to belong—when a lady in a delicate and costly summer garb, with a floating veil and gracefully swaying gown, and, altogether, an ethereal lightness that made you look at her beautifully slippered feet, to see whether she trod on the dust or floated in the air. When such a vision happened to pass through this retired street, leaving it tenderly and delusively fragrant with her passage, as if a bouquet of tea-roses had been borne along, then again it is to be feared old Hepsiba's scowl could no longer vindicate itself entirely on the plea of nearsightedness. For what end, thought she, giving vent to that feeling of hostility which is the only real abasement of the poor in presence of the rich? For what good end, in the wisdom of providence, does that woman live? Must the whole world toil that the palms of her hands may be kept white and delicate? Then, ashamed and penitent, she hid her face. May God forgive me, said she. Doubtless God did forgive her. But, taking the inward and outward history of the first half day into consideration, Hepsiba began to fear that the shop would prove her ruin, in a moral and religious point of view, without contributing very essentially towards even her temporal welfare. CHAPTER IV A DAY BEHIND THE COUNTER Towards noon Hepsiba saw an elderly gentleman, large and portly, and of a remarkably dignified demeanor, passing slowly along on the opposite side of the white and dusty street. On coming within the shadow of the pinch on Elm, he stopped, and taking off his hat, meanwhile, to wipe the perspiration from his brow, seemed to scrutinize with a special interest that dilapidated and rusty visaged house of the Seven Gables. He himself, in a very different style, was as well worth looking at as the house. No better model need be sought, nor could have been found, of a very high order of respectability, which, by some indescribable magic, not merely expressed itself in his looks and gestures, but even governed the fashion of his garments, and rendered them all proper and essential to the man. Without appearing to differ in any tangible way from other people's clothes, there was yet a wide and rich gravity about them that must have been a characteristic of the wearer, since it could not be defined as pertaining either to the cut or material. His gold-headed cane, too, a serviceable staff of dark polished wood, had similar traits, and, had it chosen to take a walk by itself, would have been recognized anywhere as a tolerably adequate representative of its master. This character, which showed itself so strikingly in everything about him, and the effect of which we seek to convey to the leader, went no deeper than his station, habits of life, and external circumstances. One perceived him to be a personage of marked influence and authority, and especially, you could feel just as certain that he was opulent as if he had exhibited his bank account, or as if you had seen him touching the twigs of the pinch on elm, and, might as like, transmuting them to gold. In his youth he had probably been considered a handsome man. At his present age his brow was too heavy, his temples too bare, his remaining hair too gray, his eye too cold, his lips too closely compressed to bear any relation to mere personal beauty. He would have made a good and massive portrait, better now perhaps than at any previous period of his life, although his look might grow positively harsh in the process of being fixed upon the canvas. The artist would have found it desirable to study his face, and prove its capacity for varied expression, to darken it with a frown, to kindle it up with a smile. While the elderly gentlemen stood looking at the pinch on house, both the frown and the smile passed successively over his countenance, his eye rested on the shop window, and putting up a pair of gold-bowed spectacles which he held in his hand he minutely surveyed Hepsaba's little arrangement of toys and commodities. At first it seemed not to please him, nay, to cause him exceeding displeasure, and yet the very next moment he smiled. While the latter expression was yet on his lips he caught a glimpse of Hepsaba, who had involuntarily bent forward to the window, and then the smile changed from acrid and disagreeable to the sunniest complacency and benevolence. He bowed, with a happy mixture of dignity and courteous kindness, and pursued his way. There he is, said Hepsaba to herself, gulping down a very bitter emotion, and since she could not rid herself of it, trying to drive it back into her heart. What does he think of it, I wonder? Does it please him? Ah, he is looking back! The gentleman had paused in the street, and turned himself half about, still with his eyes fixed on the shop window. In fact, he wheeled wholly round and commenced a step or two, as if designing to enter the shop, but as it chanced his purpose was anticipated by Hepsaba's first customer, the little cannibal of Jim Crow, who, staring up at the window, was irresistibly attracted by an elephant of gingerbread. What a grand appetite had this small urchin! Two Jim Crows immediately after breakfast, and now an elephant as a preliminary wet before dinner. By the time this latter purchase was completed, the elderly gentleman had resumed his way and turned the street corner. Take it as you like, Cousin Jaffrey, muttered the maiden-lady as she drew back after cautiously thrusting out her head and looking up and down the street. Take it as you like. You have seen my little shop window. Well, what have you to say? Is not the Pinchon house my own while I am alive? After this incident, Hepsaba retreated to the back parlor, where she had first caught up a half-finished stocking and began knitting at it with nervous and irregular jerks. But quickly finding herself at odds with the stitches, she threw it aside and walked hurriedly about the room. At length she paused before the portrait of the stern old Puritan, her ancestor, and the founder of the house. In one sense this picture had almost faded into the canvas and hidden itself behind the duskiness of age. In another she could not but fancy that it had been growing more prominent and strikingly expressive, ever since her earliest familiarity with it as a child. For while the physical outline and substance were darkening away from the beholder's eye, the bold, hard, and at the same time indirect character of the man seemed to be brought out in a kind of spiritual relief. Such an effect may occasionally be observed in pictures of antique date. They acquire a look which an artist, if he had anything like the complacency of artists nowadays, would never dream of presenting to a patron as his own characteristic expression. But which, nevertheless, we at once recognize as reflecting the unlovely truth of a human soul. In such cases the painter's deep conception of his subject's inward traits has wrought itself into the essence of the picture, and is seen after the superficial coloring has been rubbed off by time. While gazing at the portrait, Hepsiba trembled under its eye. Her hereditary reverence made her afraid to judge the character of the original so harshly as a perception of the truth compelled her to do. But still she gazed, because the face of the picture enabled her. At least she fancied so, to read more accurately and to a greater depth the face which she had just seen in the street. "'This is the very man,' murmured she to herself. "'Let Jaffrey Pinchon smile as he will. There is that look beneath. Put on him a skullcap, and a band and a black coat, and a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other. Then let Jaffrey smile as he might. He would doubt that it was the old Pinchon come again. He has proved himself the very man to build up a new house. Perhaps too, to draw down a new curse!' Thus did Hepsiba bewilder herself with these fantasies of the old time. She had dwelt too much alone, too long in the Pinchon house, until her very brain was impregnated with the dry rot of its timbers. She needed a walk along the noonday street to keep her sane. By the spell of contrast another portrait rose up before her, painted with more daring flattery than any artist would have ventured upon, but yet so delicately touched that the likeness remained perfect. Malbone's miniature, although from the same original, was far inferior to Hepsiba's air-drawn picture, at which affection and sorrowful remembrance rocked together. Soft, mildly, and cheerfully contemplative, with full red lips, just on the verge of a smile, which the eyes seemed to herald by a gentle kindling up of their orbs, feminine traits molded inseparably with those of the other sex. The miniature, likewise, had this last peculiarity, so that you inevitably thought of the original as resembling his mother, and she a lovely and lovable woman, with perhaps some beautiful infirmity of character that made it all the pleasanter to know and easier to love her. Yes, thought Hepsiba, with grief of which it was only the more tolerable portion that welled up from her heart to her eyelids, they persecuted his mother in him. He never was a pinch on. But here the shop bell rang. It was like a sound from a remote distance, so far had Hepsiba descended into the sepulchral depths of her reminiscences. On entering the shop she found an old man there, a humble resident of Pinchon Street, and whom, for a great many years past, she had suffered to be a kind of familiar of the house. He was an immemorial personage, who seemed always to have had a white head and wrinkles, and never to have possessed but a single tooth, and that a half-decade one in the front of the upper jaw. Well advanced as Hepsiba was, she could not remember when Uncle Venner, as the neighborhood called him, had not gone up and down the street, stooping a little, and drawing his feet heavily over the gravel or pavement. But still there was something tough and vigorous about him, that not only kept him in daily breath, but enabled him to fill a place which would else have been vacant in the apparently crowded world. To go of errands with his slow and shuffling gate, which made you doubt how he ever was to arrive anywhere, to saw a small household's footer to a firewood, or knocked to pieces an old barrel, or split up a pine board for kindling stuff, in summer to dig the few yards of garden ground appertaining to a low-rended tenement, and share the produce of his labor at the haves. In winter, to shovel away the snow from the sidewalk, or open paths to the woodshed, or along the clothes-line, such were some of the essential offices which Uncle Venner performed, among at least a score of families. Within that circle he claimed the same sort of privilege, and probably felt as much warmth of interest, as a clergyman does and the range of his parishioners. Not that he had laid claim to the tithe-pig, but, as an analogous mode of reference, he went his rounds every morning to gather up the crumbs of the table and overflowing's of the dinner-pot, as food for a pig of his own. In his younger days, for, after all, there was a dim tradition that he had been, not young, but younger, Uncle Venner was commonly regarded as rather deficient than otherwise in his wits. In truth he had virtually pleaded guilty to the charge, by scarcely aiming at such success as other men seek, and by taking only that humble and modest part in the intercourse of life which belongs to the alleged deficiency. But now, in his extreme old age, whether it were that his long and hard experience had actually brightened him, or that his decaying judgment rendered him less capable of fairly measuring himself, the venerable man made pretensions to no little wisdom, and really enjoyed the credit of it. There was likewise, at times, a vein of something like poetry in him. It was the moss or wallflower of his mind in its small dilapidation, and gave a charm to what might have been vulgar and commonplace in his earlier and middle life. Hepsiba had a regard for him, because his name was ancient in the town and had formally been respectable. It was a still better reason for awarding him a species of familiar reverence that Uncle Venner was himself the most ancient existence, whether of man or thing, in Pinchon Street except the house of the Seven Gables, and perhaps the Elm that overshadowed it. His patriarch now presented himself before Hepsiba, clad in an old blue coat, which had a fashionable air, and must have accrued to him from the cast-off wardrobe of some dashing clerk. As for his trousers, they were of toe-cloth, very short in the legs, and begging down strangely in the rear, but yet having a suitableness to his figure, which his other garment entirely lacked. His hat had relation to no other part of his dress, and but very little to the head that wore it. Thus Uncle Venner was a miscellaneous old gentleman. Partly himself, but in good measure, somebody else, patched together two of different epics, an epitome of times and fashions. "'So you have really begun trade,' said he. "'Really begun trade.' "'Well, I'm glad to see it. Young people should never live vital in the world, nor old ones, neither, unless when the rumour is gets hold of them. It has given me warning already, and in two or three years longer I shall think of putting aside business and retiring to my farm. That's Yonder, the great brick-house, you know. The work-house most folks call it, but I mean to do my work first and go there to be idle and enjoy myself. And I'm glad to see you beginning to do your work, Miss Hepsiba.' "'Thank you, Uncle Venner,' said Hepsiba, smiling, for she always felt kindly towards the simple and talkative old man. Had he been an old woman, she might probably have repelled the freedom which she now took in good part. It is time for me to begin work indeed, or to speak the truth, I have just begun when I ought to be giving it up.' "'Oh, never say that, Miss Hepsiba,' answered the old man. "'You are a young woman yet. Why, I hardly thought myself younger than I am now. It seems so little, while ago, since I used to see you playing about the door of the old house, quite a small child. Oftener, though, you used to be sitting at the threshold and looking gravely into the street, for you had always a grave kind of way with you, a grown-up air, when you were only the height of my knee. It seems as if I saw you now, and your grandfather with his red cloak, and his white wig, and his cocked hat, and his cane, coming out of the house and stepping so grandly up the street. Those old gentlemen that grew up before the Revolution used to put on grand heirs. In my young days the great man of the town was commonly called King, and his wife, not Queen, to be sure, but Lady. Nowadays a man would not dare to be called King, and if he feels himself a little above common folks, he only stooped so much the lower to them. I met your cousin, the judge, ten minutes ago, and in my old toe-cloth trousers, as you see, the judge raised his hat to me, I do believe, had any rate, the judge bowed and smiled. Yes, said Hepsiba, with something bitter stealing unawares into her tone, my cousin Chaffrey is thought to have a very pleasant smile. And so he has, replied Uncle Venner, and that's rather remarkable in a pinch on, for begging your pardon, Miss Hepsiba, they never had the name of being an easy and agreeable set of folks. There was no getting close to them. But now, Miss Hepsiba, if an old man may be bold to ask, why don't Judge Pinchon, with his great means, step forward and tell his cousin to shut up her little shop at once. It's for your credit to be doing something. But it's not for the judge's credit to let you. We won't talk of this, if you please, Uncle Venner, said Hepsiba coldly. I ought to say, however, that if I choose to earn bread for myself, it's not Judge Pinchon's fault. Neither will he deserve the blame, added she more kindly, remembering Uncle Venner's privileges of age and humble familiarity. If I should buy and buy, find it convenient to retire with you to your farm. And it's no bad place, either, that farm of mine, cried the old man cheerily, as if there were something positively delightful in the prospect. No bad place is the great brick farmhouse, especially for them that will find a good many old cronies there, as will be my case. I quite long to be among them sometimes, of the winter evenings, for it is but dull business for a lonesome elderly man like me to be nodding by the hour together, with no company but his airtight stove. Summer or winter, there's a great deal to be said in favor of my farm. And, take it in the autumn, what can be pleasanter than to spend a whole day on the sunny side of a barn or a woodpile, chatting with somebody as old as one's self? Or, perhaps, idling away the time with a natural-born simpleton, who knows how to be idle, because even our busy Yankees never have found out how to put him to any use. Upon my word, Miss Hepsiba, I doubt whether I've ever been so comfortable as I mean to be at my farm, which most folks call the workhouse. But you, you're a young woman yet, you never need to go there. Something still better will turn up for you, I'm sure of it. Hepsiba fancied that there was something peculiar in her venerable friend's look and tone, in so much that she gazed into his face with considerable earnestness, endeavouring to discover what secret meaning, if any, might be lurking there. Individuals whose affairs have reached an utterly desperate crisis almost invariably keep themselves alive with hopes. So much the more eerily magnificent as they have the less of solid matter within their grasp, were of to mould any judicious and moderate expectation of good. Thus, all the while Hepsiba was perfecting the scheme of her little shop, she had cherished an unacknowledged idea that some harlequin trick of fortune would intervene in her favour. For example, an uncle, who had sailed for India fifty years before, and never been heard of since, might yet return an adopter to be the comfort of his very extreme and decrepit age, and adorn her with pearls, diamonds, and Oriental shawls and turbans, and make her the ultimate heiress of his unrecognable riches. Or the member of parliament, now at the head of the English branch of the family, with which the elder stock, on this side of the Atlantic, had held little or no intercourse for the last two centuries. This eminent gentleman might invite Hepsiba to quit the ruinous house of the Seven Gables, and come over to dwell with her kindred at Pinchon Hall. But, for reasons the most imperative, she could not yield to his request. It was more probable, therefore, that the descendants of a Pinchon who had emigrated to Virginia in some past generation, and became a great planter there, hearing of Hepsiba's destitution, and impelled by the splendid generosity of character with which their Virginian mixture must have enriched the New England blood, would send her a remittance of a thousand dollars, with a hint of repeating the favour annually. Or, and surely, something so undeniably just could not be beyond the limits of reasonable anticipation, the great claim to the heritage of Waldo County might finally be decided in favour of the Pinchons, so that, instead of keeping a cent shop, Hepsiba would build a palace and look down from its highest tower on hill, dale, forest, field, and town, as her own share of the ancestral territory. These were some of the fantasies which she had long dreamed about, and, aided by these, Uncle Venner's casual attempt at encouragement kindled a strange, festal glory in the poor, bare, melancholy chambers of her brain, as if that inner world were suddenly lighted up with gas. But either he knew nothing of her castles in the air, as how should he, or else her earnest scowl disturbed his recollection, as it might a more courageous man's. Instead of pursuing any weightier topic, Uncle Venner was pleased to favour Hepsiba with some sage council in her shopkeeping capacity. Give no credit. These were some of his golden maxims. Never take paper money. Look well to your change. Ring the silver on the four-pound weight. Shove back all English half-pence and base copper tokens. Such a very plenty about town. At your leisure hours, knit children's woolen socks and mittens, brew your own yeast, and make your own ginger beer. And while Hepsiba was doing her utmost to digest the hard little pellets of his already uttered wisdom, he gave vent to his final, and what he declared to be his all-important advice, as follows. Put on a bright face for your customers, and smile pleasantly as you hand them what they ask for. A stale article, if you dip it in a good warm sunny smile, will go off better than a fresh one that you've scowled upon. To this last apothejum, poor Hepsiba responded with a sigh so deep and heavy that it almost rustled Uncle Venner quite away, like a withered leaf, as he was, before an autumnal gale. Recovering himself, however, he bent forward, and, with a good deal of feeling in his ancient visage, beckoned her nearer to him. When do you expect him home? whispered he. Whom do you mean? asked Hepsiba, turning pale. Ah, you don't love to talk about it, said Uncle Venner. Well, well, we'll say no more, though there's word of it all over town. I remember him, Miss Hepsiba, before he could run alone. During the remainder of the day, poor Hepsiba acquitted herself even less creditably as a shopkeeper than in her earlier efforts. She appeared to be walking in a dream, or more truly, the vivid life and reality assumed by her emotions made all outward occurrences unsubstantial, like the teasing fantasms of a half conscious slumber. She still responded mechanically to the frequent summons of the shop bell, and, at the demand of her customers, went prying with vague eyes about the shop, proffering them one article after another, and thrusting aside, perversely as most of them suppose, the identical thing they asked for. There is sad confusion indeed when the spirit thus flits away into the past, or into the more awful future, or, in any manner, steps across the spaceless boundary betwixt its own region and the actual world, where the body remains to guide itself as best it may, with little more than the mechanism of animal life. It is like death, without death's quiet privilege, its freedom from mortal care. Worst of all, when the actual duties are comprised in such petty details as now vexed the brooding soul of the old gentlewoman, as the animosity of fate would have it, there was a great influx of custom in the course of the afternoon. Hepsiba blundered to and fro about her small place of business, committing the most unheard of errors, now stringing up twelve, and now seven tallow candles, instead of ten to the pound, selling ginger for scotch snuff, pins for needles, and needles for pins, misreckoning her change, sometimes to the public detriment, and much oftener to her own, and thus she went on, doing her utmost to bring chaos back again, until, at the close of the day's labor, to her inexplicable astonishment, she found the money drawer almost destitute of coin. After all her painful traffic, the whole proceeds were perhaps half a dozen coppers, and a questionable nine-pence which ultimately proved to be copper likewise. At this price, or at whatever price, she rejoiced that the day had reached its end. Never before has she had such a sense of the intolerable length of time that creeps between dawn and sunset, and of the miserable irksomeness of having ought to do, and of the better wisdom that it would be to lie down at once in sullen resignation, and let life, and its toils and vexations, trample over one's prostrate body as they may. Hepsiba's final operation was with the little devourer of Jim Crow and the elephant, who now proposed to eat a camel. In her bewilderment, she offered him first a wooden jargon, and next a handful of marbles, neither of which being adapted to his else omnivorous appetite, she hastily held out her whole remaining stock of natural history in gingerbread, and huddled the small customer out of the shop. She then muffled the bell in an unfinished stocking, and put up the oaken bar across the door. During the latter process, an omnibus came to a standstill under the branches of the elm tree. Hepsiba's heart was in her mouth. Remote and dusky, and with no sunshine on all the intervening space, was that region of the past whence her only guest might be expected to arrive. Was she to meet him now? Somebody, at all events, was passing from the farther interior of the omnibus towards its entrance. A gentleman alighted, but it was only to offer his hand to a young girl, whose slender figure, no wise needing such assistance, now lightly descended the steps, and made an airy little jump from the final one to the sidewalk. She regarded her cavalier with a smile, the cheery glow of which was seen reflected on his own face as he re-entered the vehicle. The girl then turned towards the house of the seven gables, to the door of which, meanwhile, not the shop door, but the antique portal, the omnibus man had carried a light trunk and a bandbox. First giving a sharp wrap of the old iron knocker, he left his passenger and her luggage at the doorstep, and departed. Who can it be? thought Hepsiba, who had been screwing her visual organs into the acutus focus of which they were capable. The girl must have mistaken the house. She stole softly into the hall, and, herself invisible, gazed through the dusty side-lights of the portal at the young, blooming, and very cheerful face which presented itself for abitance into the gloomy old mansion. It was a face to which almost any door would have opened of its own accord. The young girl, so fresh, so unconventional, and yet so orderly and obedient to common rules, as you at once recognized her to be, was widely in contrast at that moment with everything about her. The sordid and ugly luxuriance of gigantic weeds that grew in the angle of the house, and the heavy projection that overshadowed her, and the time-worn framework of the door, none of these things belonged to her sphere. But, even as a ray of sunshine, fall into what dismal place it may, instantaneously creates for itself a propriety in being there, so did it seem altogether fit that the girl should be standing at the threshold. It was no less evidently proper that the door should swing open to admit her. The maiden lady herself, sternly inhospitable in her first purposes, soon began to feel that the door ought to be shoved back, and the rusty key be turned in the reluctant lock. Can it be Phoebe? questioned she within herself. It must be little Phoebe, for it can be nobody else, and there is a look of her father about her too. But what does she want here? And how, like a country cousin, to come down upon a poor body in this way, without so much as a day's notice, or asking whether she would be welcome? Well, she must have a night's lodging, I suppose, and to-morrow the child shall go back to her mother. Phoebe, it must be understood, was that one little offshoot of the Pinchon race to whom we have already referred, as a native of a rural part of New England, where the old fashions and feelings of relationship are still partially kept up. In her own circle it was regarded as by no means improper for kin's folk to visit one another without invitation, or preliminary and ceremonious warning. Yet, in consideration of Miss Hepsiba's recluse way of life, a letter had actually been written and dispatched, conveying information of Phoebe's projected visit. This epistle, for three or four days past, had been in the pocket of the penny-postman, who, happening to have no other business in Pinchon Street, had not yet made it convenient to call at the house of the Seven Gables. No, she can stay only one night, said Hepsiba, unbolting the door. If Clifford were to find her here, it might disturb him. End of chapter. Chapter 5 of The House of the Seven Gables. Phoebe Pinchon slept, on the night of her arrival, in a chamber that looked down on the garden of the old house. It fronted towards the east, so that at a very seasonable hour a glow of crimson light came flooding through the window, and bathed the dingy ceiling and paper hangings in its own hue. There were curtains to Phoebe's bed, a dark antique canopy, and ponderous festoons of a stuff which had been rich and even magnificent in its time, but which now brooded over the girl like a cloud, making a night in that one corner, while elsewhere it was beginning to be day. The morning light, however, soon stole into the aperture at the foot of the bed, betwixt those faded curtains. Finding the new guest there, with a bloom on her cheeks like the morning's own, and a gentle stir of departing slumber in her limbs, as when an early breeze moves the foliage, the dawn kissed her brow. It was the caress which a dewy maiden, such as the dawn is, immortally, gives to her sleeping sister, partly from the impulse of irresistible fondness, and partly as a pretty hint that it is time now to unclose her eyes. At the touch of those lips of light Phoebe quietly awoke, and for a moment did not recognize where she was, nor how those heavy curtains chanced to be festooned around her. Nothing indeed was absolutely plain to her, except that it was now early morning, and that, whatever might happen next, it was proper, first of all, to get up and say her prayers. She was the more inclined to devotion from the grim aspect of the chamber and its furniture, especially the tall, stiff chairs, one of which stood close by her bedside, and looked as if some old-fashioned personage had been sitting there all night, and had vanished only just in season to escape discovery. When Phoebe was quite dressed, she peeped out of the window, and saw a rose-bush in the garden. Being a very tall one, and of luxuriant growth, it had been propped up against the side of the house, and was literally covered with a rare and very beautiful species of white rose. A large portion of them, as the girl afterwards discovered, had blight or mildew at their hearts, but, viewed at a fair distance, the whole rose-bush looked as if it had been brought from Eden that very summer, together with the mold in which it grew. The truth was, nevertheless, that it had been planted by Alice Pinchon. She was Phoebe's great, great grand aunt, in soil which, reckoning only its cultivation as a garden-plat, was now unctuous with nearly two hundred years of vegetable decay. Growing as they did, however, out of the old earth, the flowers still sent a fresh and sweet incense up to their Creator, nor could it have been the less pure and acceptable because Phoebe's young breath mingled with it, as the fragrance floated past the window. Hastening down the creaking and carpetless staircase, she found her way into the garden, and gathered some of the most perfect of the roses, and brought them to her chamber. Little Phoebe was one of those persons who possess, as their exclusive patrimony, the gift of practical arrangement. It is a kind of natural magic that enables these favored ones to bring out the hidden capabilities of things around them, and particularly to give a look of comfort and habitableness to any place which, for however brief a period, may happen to be their home. A wild hut of underbrush, tossed together by wayfarers through the primitive forest, would acquire the home aspect by one night's lodging of such a woman, and would retain it long after her quiet figure had disappeared into the surrounding shade. No less a portion of such homely witchcraft was requisite to reclaim, as it were, Phoebe's waste, cheerless and dusky chamber, which had been untenanted so long, except by spiders, and mice, and rats, and ghosts, that it was all overgrown with the desolation which watches to obliterate every trace of man's happier hours. What was precisely Phoebe's process, we find it impossible to say. She appeared to have no preliminary design, but gave a touch here, and another there, brought some articles of furniture to light, and dragged others into the shadow, looped up or let down a window curtain, and in the course of half an hour had fully succeeded in throwing a kindly and hospitable smile over the apartment. No longer ago than the night before it had resembled nothing so much as the old maid's heart, for there was neither sunshine nor household fire in one nor the other, and save for ghosts and ghostly reminiscences, not a guest, for many years gone by, had entered the heart or the chamber. There was still another peculiarity of this inscrutable charm. The bed-chamber, no doubt, was a chamber of very great and varied experience, as a scene of human life. The joy of bridal nights had throbbed itself away here. New immortals had first drawn earthly breath here, and here, old people had died. But, whether it were the white roses, or whatever the subtle influences might be, a person of delicate instinct would have known at once that it was now a maiden's bed-chamber, and had been purified of all former evil and sorrow by her sweet breath and happy thoughts. Her dreams of the past night, being such cheerful ones, had exorcised the gloom, and now haunted the chamber in its stead. After arranging matters to her satisfaction, Phoebe emerged from her chamber with a purpose to descend again into the garden. Besides the rose-bush, she had observed several other species of flowers growing there in a wilderness of neglect, and instructing one another's development, as is often the parallel case in human society, by their uneducated entanglement and confusion. At the head of the stairs, however, she met Hepsiba, who, it still being early, invited her into a room which she would have probably called her Boudoir, had her education embraced any such French phrase. It was strewn about with a few old books, and a work-basket, and a dusty writing-desk, and had on one side a large black article of furniture of very strange appearance which the old gentlewoman told Phoebe was a harpsichord. It looked more like a coffin than anything else, and indeed, not having been played upon or opened for years, there must have been a vast deal of dead music in it, stifled for want of air. Human finger was hardly known to have touched its cords since the days of Alice Pinchon, who had learned the sweet accomplishment of melody in Europe. Hepsiba bade her young guest sit down, and, herself taking a chair nearby, looked as earnestly at Phoebe's trim little figure as if she expected to see right into its springs and mode of secrets. Cousin Phoebe, said she at last, I really can't see my way clear to keep you with me. These words, however, had not the inhospitable bluntness with which they may strike the reader, for the two relatives, in a talk before bedtime, had arrived at a certain degree of mutual understanding. Hepsiba knew enough to enable her to appreciate the circumstances, resulting from the second marriage of the girl's mother, which made it desirable for Phoebe to establish herself in another home. Nor did she misinterpret Phoebe's character, and the genial activity pervading it, one of the most valuable traits of the true New England woman, which had impelled her forth, as might be said, to seek her fortune, but with a self-respecting purpose to confer as much benefit as she could anywise receive. As one of her nearest kindred, she had naturally betaken herself to Hepsiba, with no idea of forcing herself on her cousin's protection, but only for a visit of a week or two, which might be indefinitely extended, should approve for the happiness of both. To Hepsiba's blunt observation, therefore, Phoebe replied as frankly and more cheerfully, Dear cousin, I cannot tell how it will be, said she, but I really think we may suit one another much better than you suppose. You are a nice girl, I see it plainly, continued Hepsiba, and it is not any question as to that point which makes me hesitate. But Phoebe, this house of mine is but a melancholy place for a young person to be in. It lets in the wind and rain and the snow, too in the garret and upper chambers in winter time, but it never lets in the sunshine, and as for myself, you see what I am, a dismal and lonesome old woman, for I begin to call myself old Phoebe, whose temper I am afraid is none of the best, and whose spirits are as bad as can be. I cannot make your life pleasant, cousin Phoebe, neither can I so much as give you bread to eat. You will find me a cheerful little body, answered Phoebe, smiling, and yet with a kind of gentle dignity. And I mean to earn my bread. You know I have not been brought up a pinch on. A girl learns many things in a New England village. Ah, Phoebe, said Hepsiba, sighing, your knowledge would do but little for you here. And then it is a wretched thought that you should fling away your young days in a place like this. Those cheeks would not be so rosy after a month or two. Look at my face. And indeed the contrast was very striking. You see how pale I am. It is my idea that the dust and continual decay of these old houses are unwholesome for the lungs. There is the garden, the flowers to be taken care of, observe Phoebe. I should keep myself healthy with exercise in the open air. And after all, child, exclaimed Hepsiba, suddenly rising as if to dismiss the subject, it is not for me to say who shall be a guest or inhabitant of the old pinch on house. Its master is coming. Do you mean Judge Pinchon? asked Phoebe in surprise. Judge Pinchon! answered her cousin angrily. He will hardly cross the threshold while I live. No, no. But Phoebe, you shall see the face of him I speak of. She went in quest of the miniature already described and returned with it in her hand. Giving it to Phoebe, she watched her features narrowly and with a certain jealousy as to the mode in which the girl would show herself affected by the picture. How do you like the face? asked Hepsiba. It is handsome. It is very beautiful, said Phoebe admiringly. It is as sweet a face as a man's can be or ought to be. It is something of a child's expression and yet not childish. Only one feels so very kindly towards him. He ought never to suffer anything. One would bear much for the sake of sparing him, toil or sorrow. Who is it, cousin Hepsiba? Did you never hear, whispered her cousin, betting towards her, of Clifford Pinchon? Never. I thought there were no Pinchons left except yourself and our cousin Jaffrey, answered Phoebe. And yet I seem to have heard the name of Clifford Pinchon. Yes, from my father or my mother, but has he not been a long while dead? Well, well, child, perhaps he has, said Hepsiba with a sad hollow laugh. But in old houses like this, you know, dead people are very apt to come back again. We shall see, and cousin Phoebe, since after all that I have said, your courage does not fail you, we will not part so soon. You are welcome, my child, for the present, to such a home as your kin's woman can offer you. With this measured but not exactly cold assurance of a hospitable purpose, Hepsiba kissed her cheek. They now went below stairs, where Phoebe, not so much assuming the office as attracting it to herself, by the magnetism of innate fitness, took the most active part in preparing breakfast. The mistress of the house, meanwhile, as is usual with persons of her stiff and unmeleable cast, stood mostly aside, willing to lend her aid, yet conscious that her natural inaptitude would be likely to impede the business in hand. Phoebe and the fire that boiled the tea-kettle were equally bright, cheerful, and efficient in their respective offices. Hepsiba gazed forth from her habitual sluggishness the necessary result of long solitude as from another sphere. She could not help being interested, however, and even amused at the readiness with which her new inmate adapted herself to the circumstances, and brought the house moreover and all its rusty old appliances into a suitableness for her purposes. Whatever she did, too, was done without conscious effort, and with frequent outbreaks of song which were exceedingly pleasant to the ear. This natural tunefulness made Phoebe seem like a bird in a shadowy tree, or conveyed the idea that the stream of life warbled through her heart as a brook sometimes warbles through a pleasant little dell. It betokened the cheeriness of an active temperament, finding joy in its activity, and therefore rendering it beautiful. It was a New England trait, the stern old stuff of puritanism with a gold thread in the web. Hepsiba brought out some old silver spoons with a family crest upon them, and a china tea set painted over with grotesque figures of man, bird, and beast in its grotesque landscape. These pictured people were odd humorists in a world of their own, a world of vivid brilliancy so far as color went, and still unfaded, although the teapot and small cups were as ancient as the custom itself of tea drinking. Your great great great great grandmother had these cups when she was married, said Hepsiba to Phoebe. She was a Davenport of a good family. They were almost the first tea cups ever seen in the colony, and if one of them were to be broken, my heart would break with it. But it is nonsense to speak so about a brittle tea cup when I remember what my heart has gone through without breaking. The cups, not having been used perhaps since Hepsiba's youth, had contracted no small burden of dust, which Phoebe washed away with so much care and delicacy as to satisfy even the proprietor of this invaluable china. What a nice little housewife you are! exclaimed the latter, smiling, and at the same time frowning so prodigiously that the smile was sunshine under a thundercloud. Do you do other things as well? Are you as good at your book as you are at washing tea cups? Not quite, I'm afraid, said Phoebe, laughing at the form of Hepsiba's question. But I was schoolmistress for the little children in our district last summer, and might have been so still. Ah, tis all very well! observed the maiden lady, drawing herself up. But these things must have come to you with your mother's blood. I never knew a Pinchon that had any turn for them. It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their available gifts, as was Hepsiba of this native inapplicability, so to speak, of the Pinchons to any useful purpose. She regarded it as an hereditary trait, and so perhaps it was, but unfortunately a morbid one, such as is often generated in families that remain long above the surface of society. Before they left the breakfast table, the shop bell rang sharply, and Hepsiba set down the remnant of her final cup of tea, with a look of sallow despair that was truly piteous to behold. In cases of distasteful occupation, the second day is generally worse than the first. We returned to the rack with all the soreness of the preceding torture in our limbs. At all events, Hepsiba had fully satisfied herself of the impossibility of ever becoming wanted to this peevishly obstreperous little bell. Ring as often as it might, the sound always smote upon her nervous system, rudely and suddenly. And especially now, while, with her crested teaspoons in antique china, she was flattering herself with ideas of gentility, she felt an unspeakable disinclination to confront a customer. Do not trouble yourself, dear cousin, cried Phoebe, starting lightly up. I am shopkeeper today. You child! exclaimed Hepsiba. What can a little country girl know of such matters? Oh, I have done all the shopping for the family at our village store, said Phoebe. And I have had a table at a fancy fair, and made better sales than anybody. These things are not to be learnt. They depend upon a knack that comes, I suppose. Added she, smiling, with one's mother's blood. You shall see that I am as nice a little saleswoman as I am a housewife. The old gentlewoman stole behind Phoebe, and peeped from the passage way into the shop, to note how she would manage her undertaking. It was a case of some intricacy. A very ancient woman, in a white short gown and a green petticoat, with a string of gold beads about her neck, and what looked like a nightcap on her head, had brought a quantity of yarn to barter for the commodities of the shop. She was probably the very last person in town who still kept the time-honoured spinning wheel in constant revolution. It was worth while to hear the croaking and hollow tones of the old lady, and the pleasant voice of Phoebe mingled in one twisted thread of talk, and still better to contrast their figures, so light and bloomy, so decrepit and dusky, with only the counter betwixt them in one sense, but more than three score years in another. As for the bargain, it was wrinkled slowness and craft pitted against native truth and sagacity. Was that not well done? asked Phoebe, laughing when the customer was gone. Nicely done indeed, child! answered Hepsiba. I could not have gone through with it nearly so well. As you say, it must be a knack that belongs to you on your mother's side. It is a very genuine admiration, that with which persons too shy or too awkward to take a due part in the bustling world regard the real actors in life's stirring scenes. So genuine, in fact, that the former are usually feigned to make it palatable to their self-love, by assuming that these active and forcible qualities are incompatible with others, which they choose to deem higher and more important. Thus Hepsiba was well content to acknowledge Phoebe's vastly superior gifts as a shopkeeper. She listened, with compliant here, to her suggestion of various methods whereby the influx of trade might be increased and rendered profitable without a hazardous outlay of capital. She consented that the village maiden should manufacture yeast, both liquid and in cakes, and should brew a certain kind of beer, nectarius to the palate and of rare stomachic virtues, and, moreover, should bake and exhibit for sale some little spice cakes which whosoever tasted would longingly desire to taste again. All such proofs of a ready mind and skillful handiwork were highly acceptable to the aristocratic hucksteress, so long as she could murmur to herself with a grim smile, and a half-natural sigh, and a sentiment of mixed wonder, pity, and growing affection. What a nice little body she is! If she only could be a lady too! Ah, but that's impossible! Phoebe is no pinch on. She takes everything from her mother. As to Phoebe's not being a lady, or whether she were a lady or no, it was a point perhaps difficult to decide, but which could hardly have come up for judgment at all in any fair and healthy mind. Out of New England it would be impossible to meet with a person combining so many ladylike attributes with so many others that form no necessary, if compatible, part of the character. She shocked no canon of taste. She was admirably in keeping with herself, and never jarred against surrounding circumstances. Her figure, to be sure, so small as to be almost childlike, and so elastic that motion seemed as easy, or easier to it than rest, would hardly have suited one's idea of a countess. Neither did her face, with the brown ringlets on either side, and this slightly pecant nose, and the wholesome bloom, and the clear shade of tan, and the half-dozen freckles, friendly remembrances of the April sun in breeze, precisely give us a right to call her beautiful. But there was both luster and depth in her eyes. She was very pretty, as graceful as a bird, and graceful much in the same way, as pleasant about the house as a gleam of sunshine falling on the floor through a shadow of twinkling leaves, or as a ray of firelight that dances on the wall while evening is drawing nigh. Instead of discussing her claim to rank among ladies, it would be preferable to regard Phoebe as the example of feminine grace and availability combined in a state of society, if there were any such, where ladies did not exist. There it should be woman's office to move in the midst of practical affairs, and to gild them all the very homeliest were it even the scouring of pots and kettles with an atmosphere of loveliness and joy. Such was the sphere of Phoebe. To find the born and educated lady, on the other hand, we need look no farther than Hepsiva, our forlorn old maid, in her rustling and rusty silks, where their deeply cherished and ridiculous consciousness of long descent, her shadowy claims to princely territory, and in the way of accomplishment, her recollections, it may be, of having formally thrummed on a harpsichord, and walked a minuet, and worked an antique tapestry stitch on her sampler. It was a fair parallel between new plebeianism and old gentility. It really seemed as if the battered visage of the house of the seven gables, black and heavy-browed as it still certainly looked, must have shown a kind of cheerfulness glimmering through its dusky windows as Phoebe passed to and fro in the interior. Otherwise it is impossible to explain how the people of the neighborhood so soon became aware of the girl's presence. There was a great run of custom, setting steadily in, from about ten o'clock until towards noon, relaxing somewhat at dinner time, but recommencing in the afternoon, and finally dying away a half an hour or so before the long day's sunset. One of this duchess patrons was little Ned Higgins, the devourer of Jim Crow and the elephant, who today signalized his omnivorous prowess by swallowing two dromedaries and a locomotive. Phoebe laughed as she summed up her aggregate of sales upon the slate, while Hepsiba, first drawing on a pair of silk gloves, reckoned over the sordid accumulation of copper coin, not without silver intermixed that had jingled into the till. We must renew our stock, cousin Hepsiba, cried the little saleswoman. The gingerbread figures are all gone, and so are those dutch wooden milk-mates, and most of our other play-things. There has been constant inquiry for cheap raisins, and a great cry for whistles, and trumpets, and juice-harps, and at least a dozen little boys have asked for molasses candy. And we must contrive to get a peck of russet apples, late in the season as it is. But, dear cousin, what an enormous heap of copper! Positively a copper mountain! Well done! Well done! Well done! Quote Uncle Venner, who had taken occasion to shuffle in and out of the shop several times in the course of the day. Here's a girl that will never end her days at my farm. Bless my eyes! What a brisk little soul! Yes, Phoebe is a nice girl! said Hepsiba with a scowl of austere approbation. But, Uncle Venner, you have known the family a great many years. Can you tell me whether there ever was a pinch on whom she takes after? I don't believe there ever was, answered the venerable man. At any rate, it never was my luck to see her like among them. Nor, for that matter, anywhere else. I've seen a great deal of the world, not only in people's kitchens and backyards, but at the street corners and on the wharves, and in other places where my business calls me. And I'm free to say, Miss Hepsiba, that I never knew a human creature do her work so much like one of God's angels as this child Phoebe does. Uncle Venner's eulogium, if it appear rather too high strained for the person and occasion, had, nevertheless, a sense in which it was both subtle and true. There was a spiritual quality in Phoebe's activity. The life of the long and busy day, spent in occupations that might so easily have taken a squalid and ugly aspect, had been made pleasant and even lovely, by the spontaneous grace with which these homely duties seemed to bloom out of her character, so that labor, while she dealt with it, had the easy and flexible charm of play. Angels do not toil, but let their good works grow out of them, and so did Phoebe. The two relatives, the young maid and the old one, found time before nightfall in the intervals of trade to make rapid advances towards affection and confidence. A recluse like Hepsiba usually displays remarkable frankness and at least temporary affability on being absolutely cornered, and brought to the point of personal intercourse, like the angel whom Jacob wrestled with, she is ready to bless you when once overcome. The old gentlewoman took a dreary and proud satisfaction in leading Phoebe from room to room of the house, and recounting the traditions with which, as we may say, the walls were lugubriously frescoed. She showed the indentations made by the Lieutenant Governor's sword-hilt in the door panels of the apartment where old Colonel Pinchon, a dead host, had received his affrighted visitors with an awful frown. The dusky terror of that frown, Hepsiba observed, was thought to be lingering ever since in the passageway. She bade Phoebe step into one of the tall chairs, and inspect the ancient map of the Pinchon territory at the eastward. In a tract of land on which she laid her finger, there existed a silver mine, the locality of which was precisely pointed out in some memoranda of Colonel Pinchon himself, but only to be made known when the family claims should be recognized by government. Thus it was for the interest of all New England that the Pinchons should have justice done them. She told, too, how there was undoubtedly an immense treasure of English guineas hidden somewhere about the house, or in the cellar, or possibly in the garden. If you should happen to find it, Phoebe, said Hepsiba, glancing aside at her with a grim yet kindly smile, we will tie up the shop-bell for good in all. Yes, dear cousin, answered Phoebe, but in the meantime I hear somebody rigging it. When the customer was gone, Hepsiba talked rather vaguely and at great length about a certain Alice Pinchon who had been exceedingly beautiful and accomplished in her lifetime a hundred years ago. The fragrance of her rich and delightful character still lingered about the place where she had lived, as a dried rosebud sensed the drawer where he had as withered and perished. This lovely Alice had met with some great and mysterious calamity, and had grown thin and white, and gradually faded out of the world. But even now she was supposed to haunt the house of the Seven Gables, and a great many times, especially when one of the Pinchons was to die, she had been heard playing sadly and beautifully on the harpsichord. One of these tunes, just as it had sounded from her spiritual touch, had been written down by an amateur of music. It was so exquisitely mournful that nobody, to this day, could bear to hear it played, unless when a great sorrow had made them know the still-profounder sweetness of it. Was it the same harpsichord that you showed me? inquired Phoebe. Very same! said Hepsiba. It was Alice Pinchon's harpsichord. When I was learning music, my father would never let me open it. So, as I could only play on my teacher's instrument, I have forgotten all my music long ago. Leaving these antique themes, the old lady began to talk about the daguerro typist, whom, as he seemed to be a well-meaning and orderly young man, and in narrow circumstances, she had permitted to take up his residence in one of the Seven Gables. But, on seeing more of Mr. Holgrave, she hardly knew what to make of him. He had the strangest companions imaginable, men with long beards, and dressed in linen blouses, and other such new-fangled and ill-fitting garments, reformers, temperance lecturers, and all manner of cross- looking philanthropists, community men, and come-outers, as Hepsiba believed, who acknowledged no law and ate no solid food, but lived on the scent of other people's cookery, and turned up their noses at the fair. As for the daguerro typist, she had read a paragraph in a penny-paper the other day, accusing him of making a speech full of wild and disorganizing matter, at a meeting of his banditi-like associates. For her own part, she had reason to believe that he practised animal magnetism, and if such things were in fashion nowadays, should be apt to suspect him of studying the black art up there in his lonesome chamber. But, dear cousin, said Phoebe, if the young man is so dangerous, why do you let him stay? If he does nothing worse, he may set the house on fire. Why, sometimes, answered Hepsiba, I have seriously made it a question whether I ought not to send him away. But, with all his oddities, he is a quiet kind of a person, and has such a way of taking a hold of one's mind that without exactly liking him, for I don't know enough of the young man, I should be sorry to lose sight of him entirely. A woman clings to slight acquaintances when she lives so much alone as I do. But if Mr. Holgrave is a lawless person, remonstrated Phoebe, a part of whose essence it was to keep within the limits of law. Oh! said Hepsiba carelessly, for formal as she was, still in her life's experience, she had gnashed her teeth against human law. I suppose he has a law of his own! End of chapter.