The House of the Seven Gables

n 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

rning'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 - suc

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 fu

nce, the whole rosebush looked as if it had been brought from Eden that very summer, together with the mould in which it grew. The truth was, nevertheless, that it had been planted by Alice Pyncheon - 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

etain 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

tals had first drawn earthly breath here; and here old people had died. But - whether it were the white roses, or whatever the subtile influence might be - a person of delicate instinct would have known at once that it was now a ma

head of the stairs, however, she met Hepzibah, who, it being still early, invited her into a room which she would probably have 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 g

ir near by, looked as earnestly at Phoebe's trim little figure as

last, "I really can't see my w

ther) 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-respectin

n, therefore, Phoebe replied a

" said she. "But I really think we may suit

n. 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 b

th a kind of gentle dignity. "and I mean to earn my bread. You know I have not

g 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 contras

n care of," observed Phoebe. "I should keep m

to dismiss the subject, "it is not for me to say who shall be a gu

Pyncheon?" asked

ll hardly cross the threshold while I live! No, no! B

hand. Giving it to Phoebe, she watched her features narrowly, and with a certain j

ke the face?"

be. It has something of a child's expression - and yet not childish - only one feels so very kindly towards him! He oug

ed her cousin, bending toward

affrey," answered Phoebe. "And yet I seem to have heard the name of Clifford Pyn

le are very apt to come back again! We shall see. And, Cousin Phoebe, since, after all that I have said, your courage does not

y cold assurance of a hospitable p

cheerful, and efficient, in their respective offices. Hepzibah 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 fre

an, bird, and beast, in as grotesque a landscape. These pictured people were odd humorists, in a world of their own - a world of vivid br

good family. They were almost the first teacups ever seen in the colony; and if one of them were to be broken, my heart would brea

tracted no small burden of dust, which Phoebe washed away with so much car

time frowning so prodigiously that the smile was sunshine under a thunder-cloud. "Do yo

epzibah's question. "But I was schoolmistress for the little chi

self up. "But these things must have come to you with your moth

gifts; as was Hepzibah of this native inapplicability, so to speak, of the Pyncheons to any useful purpose. She regarded it as an hereditary trai

han the first. we return to the rack with all the soreness of the preceding torture in our limbs. At all events, Hepzibah had fully satisfied herself of the impossibility of ever becoming wonted to this peevishly obstreperous little bell. Ring as often as it m

usin!" cried Phoebe, starting lig

bah. "What can a little count

ir, and made better sales than anybody. These things are not to be learnt; they depend upon a knack that comes, I suppose,

er 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-honored 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, mingl

asked Phoebe, laughing,

ot have gone through with it nearly so well. As you say, i

s well content to acknowledge Phoebe's vastly superior gifts as a shop-keeper'- she listened, with compliant ear, 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, nectareous to the palate,

be a lady; too - but that's impossible! Phoebe is

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 the slightly piquant nose, and the wholesome bloom, and the clear shade of tan, and the half dozen freckles, friendly remembrances of the April sun and breeze - precisely give us a right to call her beautiful. But there was both lustre 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 fa

ith her 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

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 the stanchest patrons was little Ned Higgins, the devourer of Jim Crow and

playthings. There has been constant inquiry for cheap raisins, and a great cry for whistles, and trumpets, and jew's-harps; and at least a dozen little boys have asked for mol

uffle in and out of the shop several times in the course of the day. "Here's a girl

obation. "But, Uncle Venner, you have known the family a great many years

. I've seen a great deal of the world, not only in people's kitchens and back-yards but at the street-corners, and on the wharves, and in other places where my

. 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

ction and confidence. A recluse, like Hepzibah, usually displays remarkable frankness, and at least temporary affability, on being absolutely co

rs with an awful frown. The dusky terror of that frown, Hepzibah 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 Pyncheon 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 som

ibah, glancing aside at her with a grim yet kindly s

Phoebe; "but, in the mean tim

awer where it has 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 Pyncheons was to die - she had been h

ichord that you showed

was learning music, my father would never let me open it. So, as I could on

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 Hepzibah 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 fare. As for the daguerreotypist, s

n is so dangerous, why do you let him stay? If he

he is a quiet kind of a person, and has such a way of taking hold of one's mind, that, without exactly liking him (for I don't know enough of

remonstrated Phoebe, a part of whose esse

still, in her life's experience, she had gnashed her teet