prompt:
Chapter: PHOEBE, on entering the shop, beheld there the already familiar face of
the little devourer--if we can reckon his mighty deeds aright--of Jim
Crow, the elephant, the camel, the dromedaries, and the locomotive.
Having expended his private fortune, on the two preceding days, in the
purchase of the above unheard-of luxuries, the young gentleman's
present errand was on the part of his mother, in quest of three eggs
and half a pound of raisins.  These articles Phoebe accordingly
supplied, and, as a mark of gratitude for his previous patronage, and a
slight super-added morsel after breakfast, put likewise into his hand a
whale! The great fish, reversing his experience with the prophet of
Nineveh, immediately began his progress down the same red pathway of
fate whither so varied a caravan had preceded him.  This remarkable
urchin, in truth, was the very emblem of old Father Time, both in
respect of his all-devouring appetite for men and things, and because
he, as well as Time, after ingulfing thus much of creation, looked
almost as youthful as if he had been just that moment made.

After partly closing the door, the child turned back, and mumbled
something to Phoebe, which, as the whale was but half disposed of, she
could not perfectly understand.

"What did you say, my little fellow?" asked she.

"Mother wants to know" repeated Ned Higgins more distinctly, "how Old
Maid Pyncheon's brother does? Folks say he has got home."

"My cousin Hepzibah's brother?" exclaimed Phoebe, surprised at this
sudden explanation of the relationship between Hepzibah and her guest.
"Her brother! And where can he have been?"

The little boy only put his thumb to his broad snub-nose, with that
look of shrewdness which a child, spending much of his time in the
street, so soon learns to throw over his features, however
unintelligent in themselves.  Then as Phoebe continued to gaze at him,
              without answering his mother's message, he took his departure.

              As the child went down the steps, a gentleman ascended them, and made
              his entrance into the shop.  It was the portly, and, had it possessed
              the advantage of a little more height, would have been the stately
              figure of a man considerably in the decline of life, dressed in a black
              suit of some thin stuff, resembling broadcloth as closely as possible.
              A gold-headed cane, of rare Oriental wood, added materially to the high
              respectability of his aspect, as did also a neckcloth of the utmost
              snowy purity, and the conscientious polish of his boots.  His dark,
              square countenance, with its almost shaggy depth of eyebrows, was
              naturally impressive, and would, perhaps, have been rather stern, had
              not the gentleman considerately taken upon himself to mitigate the
              harsh effect by a look of exceeding good-humor and benevolence.  Owing,
              however, to a somewhat massive accumulation of animal substance about
              the lower region of his face, the look was, perhaps, unctuous rather
              than spiritual, and had, so to speak, a kind of fleshly effulgence, not
              altogether so satisfactory as he doubtless intended it to be.  A
              susceptible observer, at any rate, might have regarded it as affording
              very little evidence of the general benignity of soul whereof it
              purported to be the outward reflection.  And if the observer chanced to
              be ill-natured, as well as acute and susceptible, he would probably
              suspect that the smile on the gentleman's face was a good deal akin to
              the shine on his boots, and that each must have cost him and his
              boot-black, respectively, a good deal of hard labor to bring out and
              preserve them.

              As the stranger entered the little shop, where the projection of the
              second story and the thick foliage of the elm-tree, as well as the
              commodities at the window, created a sort of gray medium, his smile
              grew as intense as if he had set his heart on counteracting the whole
              gloom of the atmosphere (besides any moral gloom pertaining to Hepzibah
                      and her inmates) by the unassisted light of his countenance.  On
              perceiving a young rose-bud of a girl, instead of the gaunt presence of
              the old maid, a look of surprise was manifest.  He at first knit his
              brows; then smiled with more unctuous benignity than ever.

              "Ah, I see how it is!" said he in a deep voice,--a voice which, had it
              come from the throat of an uncultivated man, would have been gruff,
              but, by dint of careful training, was now sufficiently agreeable,--"I
              was not aware that Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon had commenced business under
              such favorable auspices.  You are her assistant, I suppose?"

              "I certainly am," answered Phoebe, and added, with a little air of
              lady-like assumption (for, civil as the gentleman was, he evidently
                      took her to be a young person serving for wages), "I am a cousin of
              Miss Hepzibah, on a visit to her."

              "Her cousin?--and from the country? Pray pardon me, then," said the
              gentleman, bowing and smiling, as Phoebe never had been bowed to nor
              smiled on before; "in that case, we must be better acquainted; for,
              unless I am sadly mistaken, you are my own little kinswoman likewise!
              Let me see,--Mary?--Dolly?--Phoebe?--yes, Phoebe is the name! Is it
              possible that you are Phoebe Pyncheon, only child of my dear cousin and
              classmate, Arthur?  Ah, I see your father now, about your mouth! Yes,
              yes! we must be better acquainted! I am your kinsman, my dear.  Surely
              you must have heard of Judge Pyncheon?"

              As Phoebe curtsied in reply, the Judge bent forward, with the
              pardonable and even praiseworthy purpose--considering the nearness of
              blood and the difference of age--of bestowing on his young relative a
              kiss of acknowledged kindred and natural affection.  Unfortunately
              (without design, or only with such instinctive design as gives no
               account of itself to the intellect) Phoebe, just at the critical
              moment, drew back; so that her highly respectable kinsman, with his
              body bent over the counter and his lips protruded, was betrayed into
              the rather absurd predicament of kissing the empty air.  It was a
              modern parallel to the case of Ixion embracing a cloud, and was so much
              the more ridiculous as the Judge prided himself on eschewing all airy
              matter, and never mistaking a shadow for a substance.  The truth
              was,--and it is Phoebe's only excuse,--that, although Judge Pyncheon's
              glowing benignity might not be absolutely unpleasant to the feminine
              beholder, with the width of a street, or even an ordinary-sized room,
              interposed between, yet it became quite too intense, when this dark,
              full-fed physiognomy (so roughly bearded, too, that no razor could ever
                      make it smooth) sought to bring itself into actual contact with the
              object of its regards.  The man, the sex, somehow or other, was
              entirely too prominent in the Judge's demonstrations of that sort.
              Phoebe's eyes sank, and, without knowing why, she felt herself blushing
              deeply under his look.   Yet she had been kissed before, and without
              any particular squeamishness, by perhaps half a dozen different
              cousins, younger as well as older than this dark-browned,
              grisly-bearded, white-neck-clothed, and unctuously-benevolent Judge!
              Then, why not by him?

              On raising her eyes, Phoebe was startled by the change in Judge
              Pyncheon's face.  It was quite as striking, allowing for the difference
              of scale, as that betwixt a landscape under a broad sunshine and just
              before a thunder-storm; not that it had the passionate intensity of the
              latter aspect, but was cold, hard, immitigable, like a day-long
              brooding cloud.

              "Dear me! what is to be done now?" thought the country-girl to herself.
              "He looks as if there were nothing softer in him than a rock, nor
              milder than the east wind! I meant no harm! Since he is really my
              cousin, I would have let him kiss me, if I could!"

              Then, all at once, it struck Phoebe that this very Judge Pyncheon was
              the original of the miniature which the daguerreotypist had shown her
              in the garden, and that the hard, stern, relentless look, now on his
              face, was the same that the sun had so inflexibly persisted in bringing
              out.  Was it, therefore, no momentary mood, but, however skilfully
              concealed, the settled temper of his life?  And not merely so, but was
              it hereditary in him, and transmitted down, as a precious heirloom,
              from that bearded ancestor, in whose picture both the expression and,
              to a singular degree, the features of the modern Judge were shown as by
              a kind of prophecy?  A deeper philosopher than Phoebe might have found
              something very terrible in this idea.  It implied that the weaknesses
              and defects, the bad passions, the mean tendencies, and the moral
              diseases which lead to crime are handed down from one generation to
              another, by a far surer process of transmission than human law has been
              able to establish in respect to the riches and honors which it seeks to
              entail upon posterity.

              But, as it happened, scarcely had Phoebe's eyes rested again on the
              Judge's countenance than all its ugly sternness vanished; and she found
              herself quite overpowered by the sultry, dog-day heat, as it were, of
              benevolence, which this excellent man diffused out of his great heart
              into the surrounding atmosphere,--very much like a serpent, which, as a
              preliminary to fascination, is said to fill the air with his peculiar
              odor.

              "I like that, Cousin Phoebe!" cried he, with an emphatic nod of
              approbation. "I like it much, my little cousin! You are a good child,
              and know how to take care of yourself. A young girl--especially if she
              be a very pretty one--can never be too chary of her lips."

              "Indeed, sir," said Phoebe, trying to laugh the matter off, "I did not
              mean to be unkind."

              Nevertheless, whether or no it were entirely owing to the inauspicious
              commencement of their acquaintance, she still acted under a certain
              reserve, which was by no means customary to her frank and genial
              nature.  The fantasy would not quit her, that the original Puritan, of
              whom she had heard so many sombre traditions,--the progenitor of the
              whole race of New England Pyncheons, the founder of the House of the
              Seven Gables, and who had died so strangely in it,--had now stept into
              the shop.  In these days of off-hand equipment, the matter was easily
              enough arranged.  On his arrival from the other world, he had merely
              found it necessary to spend a quarter of an hour at a barber's, who had
              trimmed down the Puritan's full beard into a pair of grizzled whiskers,
              then, patronizing a ready-made clothing establishment, he had exchanged
              his velvet doublet and sable cloak, with the richly worked band under
              his chin, for a white collar and cravat, coat, vest, and pantaloons;
              and lastly, putting aside his steel-hilted broadsword to take up a
              gold-headed cane, the Colonel Pyncheon of two centuries ago steps
              forward as the Judge of the passing moment!

              Of course, Phoebe was far too sensible a girl to entertain this idea in
              any other way than as matter for a smile.  Possibly, also, could the
              two personages have stood together before her eye, many points of
              difference would have been perceptible, and perhaps only a general
              resemblance.  The long lapse of intervening years, in a climate so
              unlike that which had fostered the ancestral Englishman, must
              inevitably have wrought important changes in the physical system of his
              descendant.  The Judge's volume of muscle could hardly be the same as
              the Colonel's; there was undoubtedly less beef in him.  Though looked
              upon as a weighty man among his contemporaries in respect of animal
              substance, and as favored with a remarkable degree of fundamental
              development, well adapting him for the judicial bench, we conceive that
              the modern Judge Pyncheon, if weighed in the same balance with his
              ancestor, would have required at least an old-fashioned fifty-six to
              keep the scale in equilibrio.  Then the Judge's face had lost the ruddy
              English hue that showed its warmth through all the duskiness of the
              Colonel's weather-beaten cheek, and had taken a sallow shade, the
              established complexion of his countrymen.  If we mistake not, moreover,
              a certain quality of nervousness had become more or less manifest, even
              in so solid a specimen of Puritan descent as the gentleman now under
              discussion.  As one of its effects, it bestowed on his countenance a
              quicker mobility than the old Englishman's had possessed, and keener
              vivacity, but at the expense of a sturdier something, on which these
              acute endowments seemed to act like dissolving acids.  This process,
              for aught we know, may belong to the great system of human progress,
              which, with every ascending footstep, as it diminishes the necessity
              for animal force, may be destined gradually to spiritualize us, by
              refining away our grosser attributes of body.  If so, Judge Pyncheon
              could endure a century or two more of such refinement as well as most
              other men.

              The similarity, intellectual and moral, between the Judge and his
              ancestor appears to have been at least as strong as the resemblance of
              mien and feature would afford reason to anticipate.  In old Colonel
              Pyncheon's funeral discourse the clergyman absolutely canonized his
              deceased parishioner, and opening, as it were, a vista through the roof
              of the church, and thence through the firmament above, showed him
              seated, harp in hand, among the crowned choristers of the spiritual
              world.  On his tombstone, too, the record is highly eulogistic; nor
              does history, so far as he holds a place upon its page, assail the
              consistency and uprightness of his character.  So also, as regards the
              Judge Pyncheon of to-day, neither clergyman, nor legal critic, nor
              inscriber of tombstones, nor historian of general or local politics,
              would venture a word against this eminent person's sincerity as a
              Christian, or respectability as a man, or integrity as a judge, or
              courage and faithfulness as the often-tried representative of his
              political party.  But, besides these cold, formal, and empty words of
              the chisel that inscribes, the voice that speaks, and the pen that
              writes, for the public eye and for distant time,--and which inevitably
              lose much of their truth and freedom by the fatal consciousness of so
              doing,--there were traditions about the ancestor, and private diurnal
              gossip about the Judge, remarkably accordant in their testimony.  It is
              often instructive to take the woman's, the private and domestic, view
              of a public man; nor can anything be more curious than the vast
              discrepancy between portraits intended for engraving and the
              pencil-sketches that pass from hand to hand behind the original's back.

              For example:  tradition affirmed that the Puritan had been greedy of
              wealth; the Judge, too, with all the show of liberal expenditure, was
              said to be as close-fisted as if his gripe were of iron.  The ancestor
              had clothed himself in a grim assumption of kindliness, a rough
              heartiness of word and manner, which most people took to be the genuine
              warmth of nature, making its way through the thick and inflexible hide
              of a manly character.  His descendant, in compliance with the
              requirements of a nicer age, had etherealized this rude benevolence
              into that broad benignity of smile wherewith he shone like a noonday
              sun along the streets, or glowed like a household fire in the
              drawing-rooms of his private acquaintance.  The Puritan--if not belied
              by some singular stories, murmured, even at this day, under the
              narrator's breath--had fallen into certain transgressions to which men
              of his great animal development, whatever their faith or principles,
              must continue liable, until they put off impurity, along with the gross
              earthly substance that involves it.  We must not stain our page with
              any contemporary scandal, to a similar purport, that may have been
              whispered against the Judge.  The Puritan, again, an autocrat in his
              own household, had worn out three wives, and, merely by the remorseless
              weight and hardness of his character in the conjugal relation, had sent
              them, one after another, broken-hearted, to their graves.  Here the
              parallel, in some sort, fails.  The Judge had wedded but a single wife,
              and lost her in the third or fourth year of their marriage.  There was
              a fable, however,--for such we choose to consider it, though, not
              impossibly, typical of Judge Pyncheon's marital deportment,--that the
              lady got her death-blow in the honeymoon, and never smiled again,
              because her husband compelled her to serve him with coffee every
              morning at his bedside, in token of fealty to her liege-lord and master.

              But it is too fruitful a subject, this of hereditary resemblances,--the
              frequent recurrence of which, in a direct line, is truly unaccountable,
              when we consider how large an accumulation of ancestry lies behind
              every man at the distance of one or two centuries.  We shall only add,
              therefore, that the Puritan--so, at least, says chimney-corner
              tradition, which often preserves traits of character with marvellous
              fidelity--was bold, imperious, relentless, crafty; laying his purposes
              deep, and following them out with an inveteracy of pursuit that knew
              neither rest nor conscience; trampling on the weak, and, when essential
              to his ends, doing his utmost to beat down the strong.  Whether the
              Judge in any degree resembled him, the further progress of our
              narrative may show.

              Scarcely any of the items in the above-drawn parallel occurred to
              Phoebe, whose country birth and residence, in truth, had left her
              pitifully ignorant of most of the family traditions, which lingered,
              like cobwebs and incrustations of smoke, about the rooms and
              chimney-corners of the House of the Seven Gables.  Yet there was a
              circumstance, very trifling in itself, which impressed her with an odd
              degree of horror.  She had heard of the anathema flung by Maule, the
              executed wizard, against Colonel Pyncheon and his posterity,--that God
              would give them blood to drink,--and likewise of the popular notion,
              that this miraculous blood might now and then be heard gurgling in
              their throats.  The latter scandal--as became a person of sense, and,
              more especially, a member of the Pyncheon family--Phoebe had set down
              for the absurdity which it unquestionably was.  But ancient
              superstitions, after being steeped in human hearts and embodied in
              human breath, and passing from lip to ear in manifold repetition,
              through a series of generations, become imbued with an effect of homely
              truth.  The smoke of the domestic hearth has scented them through and
              through.  By long transmission among household facts, they grow to look
              like them, and have such a familiar way of making themselves at home
              that their influence is usually greater than we suspect.  Thus it
              happened, that when Phoebe heard a certain noise in Judge Pyncheon's
              throat,--rather habitual with him, not altogether voluntary, yet
              indicative of nothing, unless it were a slight bronchial complaint, or,
              as some people hinted, an apoplectic symptom,--when the girl heard this
              queer and awkward ingurgitation (which the writer never did hear, and
                      therefore cannot describe), she very foolishly started, and clasped her
              hands.

              Of course, it was exceedingly ridiculous in Phoebe to be discomposed by
              such a trifle, and still more unpardonable to show her discomposure to
              the individual most concerned in it.  But the incident chimed in so
              oddly with her previous fancies about the Colonel and the Judge, that,
              for the moment, it seemed quite to mingle their identity.

              "What is the matter with you, young woman?" said Judge Pyncheon, giving
              her one of his harsh looks.  "Are you afraid of anything?"

              "Oh, nothing, sir--nothing in the world!" answered Phoebe, with a
              little laugh of vexation at herself.  "But perhaps you wish to speak
              with my cousin Hepzibah.  Shall I call her?"

              "Stay a moment, if you please," said the Judge, again beaming sunshine
              out of his face.  "You seem to be a little nervous this morning.  The
              town air, Cousin Phoebe, does not agree with your good, wholesome
              country habits.  Or has anything happened to disturb you?--anything
              remarkable in Cousin Hepzibah's family?--  An arrival, eh? I thought
              so! No wonder you are out of sorts, my little cousin.  To be an inmate
              with such a guest may well startle an innocent young girl!"

              "You quite puzzle me, sir," replied Phoebe, gazing inquiringly at the
              Judge.  "There is no frightful guest in the house, but only a poor,
              gentle, childlike man, whom I believe to be Cousin Hepzibah's brother.
              I am afraid (but you, sir, will know better than I) that he is not
              quite in his sound senses; but so mild and quiet he seems to be, that a
              mother might trust her baby with him; and I think he would play with
              the baby as if he were only a few years older than itself.  He startle
              me!--Oh, no indeed!"

              "I rejoice to hear so favorable and so ingenuous an account of my
              cousin Clifford," said the benevolent Judge.  "Many years ago, when we
              were boys and young men together, I had a great affection for him, and
              still feel a tender interest in all his concerns.  You say, Cousin
              Phoebe, he appears to be weak minded.  Heaven grant him at least enough
              of intellect to repent of his past sins!"

              "Nobody, I fancy," observed Phoebe, "can have fewer to repent of."

              "And is it possible, my dear," rejoined the Judge, with a commiserating
              look, "that you have never heard of Clifford Pyncheon?--that you know
              nothing of his history? Well, it is all right; and your mother has
              shown a very proper regard for the good name of the family with which
              she connected herself.   Believe the best you can of this unfortunate
              person, and hope the best!  It is a rule which Christians should always
              follow, in their judgments of one another; and especially is it right
              and wise among near relatives, whose characters have necessarily a
              degree of mutual dependence.  But is Clifford in the parlor? I will
              just step in and see."

              "Perhaps, sir, I had better call my cousin Hepzibah," said Phoebe;
              hardly knowing, however, whether she ought to obstruct the entrance of
              so affectionate a kinsman into the private regions of the house.  "Her
              brother seemed to be just falling asleep after breakfast; and I am sure
              she would not like him to be disturbed.  Pray, sir, let me give her
              notice!"

              But the Judge showed a singular determination to enter unannounced; and
              as Phoebe, with the vivacity of a person whose movements unconsciously
              answer to her thoughts, had stepped towards the door, he used little or
              no ceremony in putting her aside.

              "No, no, Miss Phoebe!" said Judge Pyncheon in a voice as deep as a
              thunder-growl, and with a frown as black as the cloud whence it issues.
              "Stay you here! I know the house, and know my cousin Hepzibah, and know
              her brother Clifford likewise.--nor need my little country cousin put
              herself to the trouble of announcing me!"--in these latter words, by
              the bye, there were symptoms of a change from his sudden harshness into
              his previous benignity of manner.  "I am at home here, Phoebe, you must
              recollect, and you are the stranger.  I will just step in, therefore,
              and see for myself how Clifford is, and assure him and Hepzibah of my
              kindly feelings and best wishes.  It is right, at this juncture, that
              they should both hear from my own lips how much I desire to serve them.
              Ha! here is Hepzibah herself!"

              Such was the case.  The vibrations of the Judge's voice had reached the
              old gentlewoman in the parlor, where she sat, with face averted,
              waiting on her brother's slumber.  She now issued forth, as would
              appear, to defend the entrance, looking, we must needs say, amazingly
              like the dragon which, in fairy tales, is wont to be the guardian over
              an enchanted beauty.  The habitual scowl of her brow was undeniably too
              fierce, at this moment, to pass itself off on the innocent score of
              near-sightedness; and it was bent on Judge Pyncheon in a way that
              seemed to confound, if not alarm him, so inadequately had he estimated
              the moral force of a deeply grounded antipathy.   She made a repelling
              gesture with her hand, and stood a perfect picture of prohibition, at
              full length, in the dark frame of the doorway.  But we must betray
              Hepzibah's secret, and confess that the native timorousness of her
              character even now developed itself in a quick tremor, which, to her
              own perception, set each of her joints at variance with its fellows.

              Possibly, the Judge was aware how little true hardihood lay behind
              Hepzibah's formidable front.  At any rate, being a gentleman of steady
              nerves, he soon recovered himself, and failed not to approach his
              cousin with outstretched hand; adopting the sensible precaution,
              however, to cover his advance with a smile, so broad and sultry, that,
              had it been only half as warm as it looked, a trellis of grapes might
              at once have turned purple under its summer-like exposure.  It may have
              been his purpose, indeed, to melt poor Hepzibah on the spot, as if she
              were a figure of yellow wax.

              "Hepzibah, my beloved cousin, I am rejoiced!" exclaimed the Judge most
              emphatically.  "Now, at length, you have something to live for.  Yes,
              and all of us, let me say, your friends and kindred, have more to live
              for than we had yesterday.  I have lost no time in hastening to offer
              any assistance in my power towards making Clifford comfortable.  He
              belongs to us all.  I know how much he requires,--how much he used to
              require,--with his delicate taste, and his love of the beautiful.
              Anything in my house,--pictures, books, wine, luxuries of the
              table,--he may command them all! It would afford me most heartfelt
              gratification to see him! Shall I step in, this moment?"

              "No," replied Hepzibah, her voice quivering too painfully to allow of
              many words.  "He cannot see visitors!"

              "A visitor, my dear cousin!--do you call me so?" cried the Judge, whose
              sensibility, it seems, was hurt by the coldness of the phrase.  "Nay,
              then, let me be Clifford's host, and your own likewise.  Come at once
              to my house.  The country air, and all the conveniences,--I may say
              luxuries,--that I have gathered about me, will do wonders for him.  And
              you and I, dear Hepzibah, will consult together, and watch together,
              and labor together, to make our dear Clifford happy.  Come! why should
              we make more words about what is both a duty and a pleasure on my part?
              Come to me at once!"

              On hearing these so hospitable offers, and such generous recognition of
              the claims of kindred, Phoebe felt very much in the mood of running up
              to Judge Pyncheon, and giving him, of her own accord, the kiss from
              which she had so recently shrunk away.  It was quite otherwise with
              Hepzibah; the Judge's smile seemed to operate on her acerbity of heart
              like sunshine upon vinegar, making it ten times sourer than ever.

              "Clifford," said she,--still too agitated to utter more than an abrupt
              sentence,--"Clifford has a home here!"

              "May Heaven forgive you, Hepzibah," said Judge Pyncheon,--reverently
              lifting his eyes towards that high court of equity to which he
              appealed,--"if you suffer any ancient prejudice or animosity to weigh
              with you in this matter.  I stand here with an open heart, willing and
              anxious to receive yourself and Clifford into it.  Do not refuse my
              good offices,--my earnest propositions for your welfare! They are such,
              in all respects, as it behooves your nearest kinsman to make.  It will
              be a heavy responsibility, cousin, if you confine your brother to this
              dismal house and stifled air, when the delightful freedom of my
              country-seat is at his command."

              "It would never suit Clifford," said Hepzibah, as briefly as before.

              "Woman!" broke forth the Judge, giving way to his resentment, "what is
              the meaning of all this? Have you other resources? Nay, I suspected as
              much! Take care, Hepzibah, take care! Clifford is on the brink of as
              black a ruin as ever befell him yet! But why do I talk with you, woman
              as you are? Make way!--I must see Clifford!"

              Hepzibah spread out her gaunt figure across the door, and seemed really
              to increase in bulk; looking the more terrible, also, because there was
              so much terror and agitation in her heart.  But Judge Pyncheon's
              evident purpose of forcing a passage was interrupted by a voice from
              the inner room; a weak, tremulous, wailing voice, indicating helpless
              alarm, with no more energy for self-defence than belongs to a
              frightened infant.

              "Hepzibah, Hepzibah!" cried the voice; "go down on your knees to him!
              Kiss his feet! Entreat him not to come in! Oh, let him have mercy on
              me! Mercy! mercy!"

              For the instant, it appeared doubtful whether it were not the Judge's
              resolute purpose to set Hepzibah aside, and step across the threshold
              into the parlor, whence issued that broken and miserable murmur of
              entreaty.  It was not pity that restrained him, for, at the first sound
              of the enfeebled voice, a red fire kindled in his eyes, and he made a
              quick pace forward, with something inexpressibly fierce and grim
              darkening forth, as it were, out of the whole man.  To know Judge
              Pyncheon was to see him at that moment.  After such a revelation, let
              him smile with what sultriness he would, he could much sooner turn
              grapes purple, or pumpkins yellow, than melt the iron-branded
              impression out of the beholder's memory.  And it rendered his aspect
              not the less, but more frightful, that it seemed not to express wrath
              or hatred, but a certain hot fellness of purpose, which annihilated
              everything but itself.

              Yet, after all, are we not slandering an excellent and amiable man?
              Look at the Judge now! He is apparently conscious of having erred, in
              too energetically pressing his deeds of loving-kindness on persons
              unable to appreciate them.  He will await their better mood, and hold
              himself as ready to assist them then as at this moment.  As he draws
              back from the door, an all-comprehensive benignity blazes from his
              visage, indicating that he gathers Hepzibah, little Phoebe, and the
              invisible Clifford, all three, together with the whole world besides,
              into his immense heart, and gives them a warm bath in its flood of
              affection.

              "You do me great wrong, dear Cousin Hepzibah!" said he, first kindly
              offering her his hand, and then drawing on his glove preparatory to
              departure.  "Very great wrong! But I forgive it, and will study to make
              you think better of me.  Of course, our poor Clifford being in so
              unhappy a state of mind, I cannot think of urging an interview at
              present.  But I shall watch over his welfare as if he were my own
              beloved brother; nor do I at all despair, my dear cousin, of
              constraining both him and you to acknowledge your injustice.  When that
              shall happen, I desire no other revenge than your acceptance of the
              best offices in my power to do you."

              With a bow to Hepzibah, and a degree of paternal benevolence in his
              parting nod to Phoebe, the Judge left the shop, and went smiling along
              the street.  As is customary with the rich, when they aim at the honors
              of a republic, he apologized, as it were, to the people, for his
              wealth, prosperity, and elevated station, by a free and hearty manner
              towards those who knew him; putting off the more of his dignity in due
              proportion with the humbleness of the man whom he saluted, and thereby
              proving a haughty consciousness of his advantages as irrefragably as if
              he had marched forth preceded by a troop of lackeys to clear the way.
              On this particular forenoon, so excessive was the warmth of Judge
              Pyncheon's kindly aspect, that (such, at least, was the rumor about
                      town) an extra passage of the water-carts was found essential, in order
              to lay the dust occasioned by so much extra sunshine!

              No sooner had he disappeared than Hepzibah grew deadly white, and,
              staggering towards Phoebe, let her head fall on the young girl's
              shoulder.

              "O Phoebe!" murmured she, "that man has been the horror of my life!
              Shall I never, never have the courage,--will my voice never cease from
              trembling long enough to let me tell him what he is?"

              "Is he so very wicked?" asked Phoebe.  "Yet his offers were surely
              kind!"

              "Do not speak of them,--he has a heart of iron!" rejoined Hepzibah.
              "Go, now, and talk to Clifford! Amuse and keep him quiet! It would
              disturb him wretchedly to see me so agitated as I am.  There, go, dear
              child, and I will try to look after the shop."

              Phoebe went accordingly, but perplexed herself, meanwhile, with queries
              as to the purport of the scene which she had just witnessed, and also
              whether judges, clergymen, and other characters of that eminent stamp
              and respectability, could really, in any single instance, be otherwise
              than just and upright men.   A doubt of this nature has a most
              disturbing influence, and, if shown to be a fact, comes with fearful
              and startling effect on minds of the trim, orderly, and limit-loving
              class, in which we find our little country-girl.  Dispositions more
              boldly speculative may derive a stern enjoyment from the discovery,
              since there must be evil in the world, that a high man is as likely to
              grasp his share of it as a low one.  A wider scope of view, and a
              deeper insight, may see rank, dignity, and station, all proved
              illusory, so far as regards their claim to human reverence, and yet not
              feel as if the universe were thereby tumbled headlong into chaos.  But
              Phoebe, in order to keep the universe in its old place, was fain to
              smother, in some degree, her own intuitions as to Judge Pyncheon's
              character.  And as for her cousin's testimony in disparagement of it,
              she concluded that Hepzibah's judgment was embittered by one of those
              family feuds which render hatred the more deadly by the dead and
              corrupted love that they intermingle with its native poison.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The Pyncheon of To-Day: The little boy who had bought gingerbread from Hepzibah on the first day returns on an errand for his mother. This little urchin was the very emblem of Father Time, in his all-devouring appetite for gingerbread men and things and because he looked almost as youthful as if he had just been made. The boy, whose name is Ned Higgins, asks for his mother how Old Maid Pyncheon's brother is doing. Phoebe tells him nothing. Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon enters the store and introduces himself to Phoebe. Judge Jaffrey attempts to kiss her but Phoebe draws back from him. His face hardens at her refusal, and Phoebe realizes that this is the stern man in Holgrave's daguerreotype. Phoebe, seeing the Colonel Pyncheon in his descendant the Judge, wonders whether the weaknesses and defects of the Colonel and his crime had been passed down through the generations. Yet Judge Pyncheon almost immediately less stern, and even compliments her. Phoebe finds important comparisons between rumors about Colonel Pyncheon and facts about the Judge. Phoebe tells Judge Pyncheon that a poor, gentle, childlike man has arrived at the house. Judge Pyncheon realizes that Phoebe knows little of Clifford's history. Phoebe wants to fetch Hepzibah, but Judge Pyncheon is determined to go in the house himself unannounced. He does so and finds Hepzibah, her scowl greater than ever. Judge Pyncheon tells Hepzibah that Clifford belongs to all of them and that he knows how much Clifford requires with his delicate taste and love of the beautiful. He offers to take Clifford off of Hepzibah's hands, but Hepzibah claims that leaving the house would never suit Clifford. Judge Pyncheon demands to see Clifford. Judge Pyncheon appears to be an intimidating man, but he has a resolute sense of purpose and errs mostly in energetically pressing his deeds of kindness on others. When the Judge leaves, Hepzibah grows deadly white and laments her condition to Phoebe. When Phoebe claims that Judge Pyncheon does not have a wicked purpose, Hepzibah says that he has a heart of iron.


prompt:
Chapter: TRULY was there something high, generous, and noble in the native
composition of our poor old Hepzibah! Or else,--and it was quite as
probably the case,--she had been enriched by poverty, developed by
sorrow, elevated by the strong and solitary affection of her life, and
thus endowed with heroism, which never could have characterized her in
what are called happier circumstances.  Through dreary years Hepzibah
had looked forward--for the most part despairingly, never with any
confidence of hope, but always with the feeling that it was her
brightest possibility--to the very position in which she now found
herself.  In her own behalf, she had asked nothing of Providence but
the opportunity of devoting herself to this brother, whom she had so
loved,--so admired for what he was, or might have been,--and to whom
she had kept her faith, alone of all the world, wholly, unfalteringly,
    at every instant, and throughout life.  And here, in his late decline,
    the lost one had come back out of his long and strange misfortune, and
    was thrown on her sympathy, as it seemed, not merely for the bread of
    his physical existence, but for everything that should keep him morally
    alive.   She had responded to the call.  She had come forward,--our
    poor, gaunt Hepzibah, in her rusty silks, with her rigid joints, and
    the sad perversity of her scowl,--ready to do her utmost; and with
    affection enough, if that were all, to do a hundred times as much!
    There could be few more tearful sights,--and Heaven forgive us if a
    smile insist on mingling with our conception of it!--few sights with
    truer pathos in them, than Hepzibah presented on that first afternoon.

    How patiently did she endeavor to wrap Clifford up in her great, warm
    love, and make it all the world to him, so that he should retain no
    torturing sense of the coldness and dreariness without!  Her little
    efforts to amuse him! How pitiful, yet magnanimous, they were!

    Remembering his early love of poetry and fiction, she unlocked a
    bookcase, and took down several books that had been excellent reading
    in their day.  There was a volume of Pope, with the Rape of the Lock in
    it, and another of the Tatler, and an odd one of Dryden's Miscellanies,
    all with tarnished gilding on their covers, and thoughts of tarnished
    brilliancy inside.  They had no success with Clifford.  These, and all
    such writers of society, whose new works glow like the rich texture of
    a just-woven carpet, must be content to relinquish their charm, for
    every reader, after an age or two, and could hardly be supposed to
    retain any portion of it for a mind that had utterly lost its estimate
    of modes and manners.  Hepzibah then took up Rasselas, and began to
    read of the Happy Valley, with a vague idea that some secret of a
    contented life had there been elaborated, which might at least serve
    Clifford and herself for this one day.  But the Happy Valley had a
    cloud over it.  Hepzibah troubled her auditor, moreover, by innumerable
    sins of emphasis, which he seemed to detect, without any reference to
    the meaning; nor, in fact, did he appear to take much note of the sense
    of what she read, but evidently felt the tedium of the lecture, without
    harvesting its profit.  His sister's voice, too, naturally harsh, had,
    in the course of her sorrowful lifetime, contracted a kind of croak,
    which, when it once gets into the human throat, is as ineradicable as
    sin.  In both sexes, occasionally, this lifelong croak, accompanying
    each word of joy or sorrow, is one of the symptoms of a settled
    melancholy; and wherever it occurs, the whole history of misfortune is
    conveyed in its slightest accent.  The effect is as if the voice had
    been dyed black; or,--if we must use a more moderate simile,--this
    miserable croak, running through all the variations of the voice, is
    like a black silken thread, on which the crystal beads of speech are
    strung, and whence they take their hue.  Such voices have put on
    mourning for dead hopes; and they ought to die and be buried along with
    them!

    Discerning that Clifford was not gladdened by her efforts, Hepzibah
    searched about the house for the means of more exhilarating pastime.
    At one time, her eyes chanced to rest on Alice Pyncheon's harpsichord.
    It was a moment of great peril; for,--despite the traditionary awe that
    had gathered over this instrument of music, and the dirges which
    spiritual fingers were said to play on it,--the devoted sister had
    solemn thoughts of thrumming on its chords for Clifford's benefit, and
    accompanying the performance with her voice.  Poor Clifford! Poor
    Hepzibah! Poor harpsichord! All three would have been miserable
    together.  By some good agency,--possibly, by the unrecognized
    interposition of the long-buried Alice herself,--the threatening
    calamity was averted.

    But the worst of all--the hardest stroke of fate for Hepzibah to
    endure, and perhaps for Clifford, too was his invincible distaste for
    her appearance.  Her features, never the most agreeable, and now harsh
    with age and grief, and resentment against the world for his sake; her
    dress, and especially her turban; the queer and quaint manners, which
    had unconsciously grown upon her in solitude,--such being the poor
    gentlewoman's outward characteristics, it is no great marvel, although
    the mournfullest of pities, that the instinctive lover of the Beautiful
    was fain to turn away his eyes.  There was no help for it.  It would be
    the latest impulse to die within him.  In his last extremity, the
    expiring breath stealing faintly through Clifford's lips, he would
    doubtless press Hepzibah's hand, in fervent recognition of all her
    lavished love, and close his eyes,--but not so much to die, as to be
    constrained to look no longer on her face! Poor Hepzibah! She took
    counsel with herself what might be done, and thought of putting ribbons
    on her turban; but, by the instant rush of several guardian angels, was
    withheld from an experiment that could hardly have proved less than
    fatal to the beloved object of her anxiety.

    To be brief, besides Hepzibah's disadvantages of person, there was an
    uncouthness pervading all her deeds; a clumsy something, that could but
    ill adapt itself for use, and not at all for ornament.  She was a grief
    to Clifford, and she knew it.  In this extremity, the antiquated virgin
    turned to Phoebe.  No grovelling jealousy was in her heart.  Had it
    pleased Heaven to crown the heroic fidelity of her life by making her
    personally the medium of Clifford's happiness, it would have rewarded
    her for all the past, by a joy with no bright tints, indeed, but deep
    and true, and worth a thousand gayer ecstasies.  This could not be.
    She therefore turned to Phoebe, and resigned the task into the young
    girl's hands.  The latter took it up cheerfully, as she did everything,
    but with no sense of a mission to perform, and succeeding all the
    better for that same simplicity.

    By the involuntary effect of a genial temperament, Phoebe soon grew to
    be absolutely essential to the daily comfort, if not the daily life, of
    her two forlorn companions.  The grime and sordidness of the House of
    the Seven Gables seemed to have vanished since her appearance there;
    the gnawing tooth of the dry-rot was stayed among the old timbers of
    its skeleton frame; the dust had ceased to settle down so densely, from
    the antique ceilings, upon the floors and furniture of the rooms
    below,--or, at any rate, there was a little housewife, as light-footed
    as the breeze that sweeps a garden walk, gliding hither and thither to
    brush it all away.  The shadows of gloomy events that haunted the else
    lonely and desolate apartments; the heavy, breathless scent which death
    had left in more than one of the bedchambers, ever since his visits of
    long ago,--these were less powerful than the purifying influence
    scattered throughout the atmosphere of the household by the presence of
    one youthful, fresh, and thoroughly wholesome heart.  There was no
    morbidness in Phoebe; if there had been, the old Pyncheon House was the
    very locality to ripen it into incurable disease.  But now her spirit
    resembled, in its potency, a minute quantity of ottar of rose in one of
    Hepzibah's huge, iron-bound trunks, diffusing its fragrance through the
    various articles of linen and wrought-lace, kerchiefs, caps, stockings,
    folded dresses, gloves, and whatever else was treasured there.  As
    every article in the great trunk was the sweeter for the rose-scent, so
    did all the thoughts and emotions of Hepzibah and Clifford, sombre as
    they might seem, acquire a subtle attribute of happiness from Phoebe's
    intermixture with them.  Her activity of body, intellect, and heart
    impelled her continually to perform the ordinary little toils that
    offered themselves around her, and to think the thought proper for the
    moment, and to sympathize,--now with the twittering gayety of the
    robins in the pear-tree, and now to such a depth as she could with
    Hepzibah's dark anxiety, or the vague moan of her brother.  This facile
    adaptation was at once the symptom of perfect health and its best
    preservative.

    A nature like Phoebe's has invariably its due influence, but is seldom
    regarded with due honor.  Its spiritual force, however, may be
    partially estimated by the fact of her having found a place for
    herself, amid circumstances so stern as those which surrounded the
    mistress of the house; and also by the effect which she produced on a
    character of so much more mass than her own.   For the gaunt, bony
    frame and limbs of Hepzibah, as compared with the tiny lightsomeness of
    Phoebe's figure, were perhaps in some fit proportion with the moral
    weight and substance, respectively, of the woman and the girl.

    To the guest,--to Hepzibah's brother,--or Cousin Clifford, as Phoebe
    now began to call him,--she was especially necessary. Not that he could
    ever be said to converse with her, or often manifest, in any other very
    definite mode, his sense of a charm in her society. But if she were a
    long while absent he became pettish and nervously restless, pacing the
    room to and fro with the uncertainty that characterized all his
    movements; or else would sit broodingly in his great chair, resting his
    head on his hands, and evincing life only by an electric sparkle of
    ill-humor, whenever Hepzibah endeavored to arouse him.  Phoebe's
    presence, and the contiguity of her fresh life to his blighted one, was
    usually all that he required. Indeed, such was the native gush and play
    of her spirit, that she was seldom perfectly quiet and undemonstrative,
    any more than a fountain ever ceases to dimple and warble with its
    flow. She possessed the gift of song, and that, too, so naturally, that
    you would as little think of inquiring whence she had caught it, or
    what master had taught her, as of asking the same questions about a
    bird, in whose small strain of music we recognize the voice of the
    Creator as distinctly as in the loudest accents of his thunder. So long
    as Phoebe sang, she might stray at her own will about the house.
    Clifford was content, whether the sweet, airy homeliness of her tones
    came down from the upper chambers, or along the passageway from the
    shop, or was sprinkled through the foliage of the pear-tree, inward
    from the garden, with the twinkling sunbeams. He would sit quietly,
    with a gentle pleasure gleaming over his face, brighter now, and now a
    little dimmer, as the song happened to float near him, or was more
    remotely heard. It pleased him best, however, when she sat on a low
    footstool at his knee.

    It is perhaps remarkable, considering her temperament, that Phoebe
    oftener chose a strain of pathos than of gayety.  But the young and
    happy are not ill pleased to temper their life with a transparent
    shadow.  The deepest pathos of Phoebe's voice and song, moreover, came
    sifted through the golden texture of a cheery spirit, and was somehow
    so interfused with the quality thence acquired, that one's heart felt
    all the lighter for having wept at it.  Broad mirth, in the sacred
    presence of dark misfortune, would have jarred harshly and irreverently
    with the solemn symphony that rolled its undertone through Hepzibah's
    and her brother's life.  Therefore, it was well that Phoebe so often
    chose sad themes, and not amiss that they ceased to be so sad while she
    was singing them.

    Becoming habituated to her companionship, Clifford readily showed how
    capable of imbibing pleasant tints and gleams of cheerful light from
    all quarters his nature must originally have been.  He grew youthful
    while she sat by him.  A beauty,--not precisely real, even in its
    utmost manifestation, and which a painter would have watched long to
    seize and fix upon his canvas, and, after all, in vain,--beauty,
    nevertheless, that was not a mere dream, would sometimes play upon and
    illuminate his face.  It did more than to illuminate; it transfigured
    him with an expression that could only be interpreted as the glow of an
    exquisite and happy spirit.  That gray hair, and those furrows,--with
    their record of infinite sorrow so deeply written across his brow, and
    so compressed, as with a futile effort to crowd in all the tale, that
    the whole inscription was made illegible,--these, for the moment,
    vanished.  An eye at once tender and acute might have beheld in the man
    some shadow of what he was meant to be.  Anon, as age came stealing,
    like a sad twilight, back over his figure, you would have felt tempted
    to hold an argument with Destiny, and affirm, that either this being
    should not have been made mortal, or mortal existence should have been
    tempered to his qualities.  There seemed no necessity for his having
    drawn breath at all; the world never wanted him; but, as he had
    breathed, it ought always to have been the balmiest of summer air.  The
    same perplexity will invariably haunt us with regard to natures that
    tend to feed exclusively upon the Beautiful, let their earthly fate be
    as lenient as it may.

    Phoebe, it is probable, had but a very imperfect comprehension of the
    character over which she had thrown so beneficent a spell.  Nor was it
    necessary.  The fire upon the hearth can gladden a whole semicircle of
    faces round about it, but need not know the individuality of one among
    them all.  Indeed, there was something too fine and delicate in
    Clifford's traits to be perfectly appreciated by one whose sphere lay
    so much in the Actual as Phoebe's did.  For Clifford, however, the
    reality, and simplicity, and thorough homeliness of the girl's nature
    were as powerful a charm as any that she possessed.  Beauty, it is
    true, and beauty almost perfect in its own style, was indispensable.
    Had Phoebe been coarse in feature, shaped clumsily, of a harsh voice,
    and uncouthly mannered, she might have been rich with all good gifts,
    beneath this unfortunate exterior, and still, so long as she wore the
    guise of woman, she would have shocked Clifford, and depressed him by
    her lack of beauty.  But nothing more beautiful--nothing prettier, at
    least--was ever made than Phoebe.  And, therefore, to this man,--whose
    whole poor and impalpable enjoyment of existence heretofore, and until
    both his heart and fancy died within him, had been a dream,--whose
    images of women had more and more lost their warmth and substance, and
    been frozen, like the pictures of secluded artists, into the chillest
    ideality,--to him, this little figure of the cheeriest household life
    was just what he required to bring him back into the breathing world.
    Persons who have wandered, or been expelled, out of the common track of
    things, even were it for a better system, desire nothing so much as to
    be led back.  They shiver in their loneliness, be it on a mountain-top
    or in a dungeon.  Now, Phoebe's presence made a home about her,--that
    very sphere which the outcast, the prisoner, the potentate,--the wretch
    beneath mankind, the wretch aside from it, or the wretch above
    it,--instinctively pines after,--a home! She was real! Holding her
    hand, you felt something; a tender something; a substance, and a warm
    one:  and so long as you should feel its grasp, soft as it was, you
    might be certain that your place was good in the whole sympathetic
    chain of human nature.  The world was no longer a delusion.

    By looking a little further in this direction, we might suggest an
    explanation of an often-suggested mystery.  Why are poets so apt to
    choose their mates, not for any similarity of poetic endowment, but for
    qualities which might make the happiness of the rudest handicraftsman
    as well as that of the ideal craftsman of the spirit?  Because,
    probably, at his highest elevation, the poet needs no human
    intercourse; but he finds it dreary to descend, and be a stranger.

    There was something very beautiful in the relation that grew up between
    this pair, so closely and constantly linked together, yet with such a
    waste of gloomy and mysterious years from his birthday to hers.  On
    Clifford's part it was the feeling of a man naturally endowed with the
    liveliest sensibility to feminine influence, but who had never quaffed
    the cup of passionate love, and knew that it was now too late.  He knew
    it, with the instinctive delicacy that had survived his intellectual
    decay.  Thus, his sentiment for Phoebe, without being paternal, was not
    less chaste than if she had been his daughter.  He was a man, it is
    true, and recognized her as a woman.  She was his only representative
    of womankind.  He took unfailing note of every charm that appertained
    to her sex, and saw the ripeness of her lips, and the virginal
    development of her bosom.   All her little womanly ways, budding out of
    her like blossoms on a young fruit-tree, had their effect on him, and
    sometimes caused his very heart to tingle with the keenest thrills of
    pleasure.  At such moments,--for the effect was seldom more than
    momentary,--the half-torpid man would be full of harmonious life, just
    as a long-silent harp is full of sound, when the musician's fingers
    sweep across it.  But, after all, it seemed rather a perception, or a
    sympathy, than a sentiment belonging to himself as an individual.  He
    read Phoebe as he would a sweet and simple story; he listened to her as
    if she were a verse of household poetry, which God, in requital of his
    bleak and dismal lot, had permitted some angel, that most pitied him,
    to warble through the house.  She was not an actual fact for him, but
    the interpretation of all that he lacked on earth brought warmly home
    to his conception; so that this mere symbol, or life-like picture, had
    almost the comfort of reality.

    But we strive in vain to put the idea into words.  No adequate
    expression of the beauty and profound pathos with which it impresses us
    is attainable.  This being, made only for happiness, and heretofore so
    miserably failing to be happy,--his tendencies so hideously thwarted,
    that, some unknown time ago, the delicate springs of his character,
    never morally or intellectually strong, had given way, and he was now
    imbecile,--this poor, forlorn voyager from the Islands of the Blest, in
    a frail bark, on a tempestuous sea, had been flung, by the last
    mountain-wave of his shipwreck, into a quiet harbor.  There, as he lay
    more than half lifeless on the strand, the fragrance of an earthly
    rose-bud had come to his nostrils, and, as odors will, had summoned up
    reminiscences or visions of all the living and breathing beauty amid
    which he should have had his home.  With his native susceptibility of
    happy influences, he inhales the slight, ethereal rapture into his
    soul, and expires!

    And how did Phoebe regard Clifford? The girl's was not one of those
    natures which are most attracted by what is strange and exceptional in
    human character.  The path which would best have suited her was the
    well-worn track of ordinary life; the companions in whom she would most
    have delighted were such as one encounters at every turn.  The mystery
    which enveloped Clifford, so far as it affected her at all, was an
    annoyance, rather than the piquant charm which many women might have
    found in it.  Still, her native kindliness was brought strongly into
    play, not by what was darkly picturesque in his situation, nor so much,
    even, by the finer graces of his character, as by the simple appeal of
    a heart so forlorn as his to one so full of genuine sympathy as hers.
    She gave him an affectionate regard, because he needed so much love,
    and seemed to have received so little.  With a ready tact, the result
    of ever-active and wholesome sensibility, she discerned what was good
    for him, and did it.  Whatever was morbid in his mind and experience
    she ignored; and thereby kept their intercourse healthy, by the
    incautious, but, as it were, heaven-directed freedom of her whole
    conduct.  The sick in mind, and, perhaps, in body, are rendered more
    darkly and hopelessly so by the manifold reflection of their disease,
    mirrored back from all quarters in the deportment of those about them;
they are compelled to inhale the poison of their own breath, in
infinite repetition.  But Phoebe afforded her poor patient a supply of
purer air.  She impregnated it, too, not with a wild-flower scent,--for
wildness was no trait of hers,--but with the perfume of garden-roses,
         pinks, and other blossoms of much sweetness, which nature and man have
         consented together in making grow from summer to summer, and from
         century to century.  Such a flower was Phoebe in her relation with
         Clifford, and such the delight that he inhaled from her.

         Yet, it must be said, her petals sometimes drooped a little, in
         consequence of the heavy atmosphere about her.  She grew more
         thoughtful than heretofore.  Looking aside at Clifford's face, and
         seeing the dim, unsatisfactory elegance and the intellect almost
         quenched, she would try to inquire what had been his life.  Was he
         always thus? Had this veil been over him from his birth?--this veil,
         under which far more of his spirit was hidden than revealed, and
         through which he so imperfectly discerned the actual world,--or was its
         gray texture woven of some dark calamity?  Phoebe loved no riddles, and
         would have been glad to escape the perplexity of this one.
         Nevertheless, there was so far a good result of her meditations on
         Clifford's character, that, when her involuntary conjectures, together
         with the tendency of every strange circumstance to tell its own story,
         had gradually taught her the fact, it had no terrible effect upon her.
         Let the world have done him what vast wrong it might, she knew Cousin
         Clifford too well--or fancied so--ever to shudder at the touch of his
         thin, delicate fingers.

         Within a few days after the appearance of this remarkable inmate, the
         routine of life had established itself with a good deal of uniformity
         in the old house of our narrative.  In the morning, very shortly after
         breakfast, it was Clifford's custom to fall asleep in his chair; nor,
         unless accidentally disturbed, would he emerge from a dense cloud of
         slumber or the thinner mists that flitted to and fro, until well
         towards noonday.  These hours of drowsihead were the season of the old
         gentlewoman's attendance on her brother, while Phoebe took charge of
         the shop; an arrangement which the public speedily understood, and
         evinced their decided preference of the younger shopwoman by the
         multiplicity of their calls during her administration of affairs.
         Dinner over, Hepzibah took her knitting-work,--a long stocking of gray
         yarn, for her brother's winter wear,--and with a sigh, and a scowl of
         affectionate farewell to Clifford, and a gesture enjoining watchfulness
         on Phoebe, went to take her seat behind the counter.  It was now the
         young girl's turn to be the nurse,--the guardian, the playmate,--or
         whatever is the fitter phrase,--of the gray-haired man.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Clifford and Phoebe: For years Hepzibah had looked forward to the point at which she now found herself. She had asked for nothing but the opportunity to devote herself to the brother she so loved. She adored giving attention to Clifford, but she also troubled Clifford through innumerable sins of emphasis. The worst burden that she faced from Clifford was his distaste for her appearance. She was a grief to Clifford and she knew it. Phoebe did not quite know the effect that she had on Clifford. For Clifford, Phoebe was the only representative of womankind, yet this sentiment was chaste. He read Phoebe as he would a simple story; she was not an actual fact for him, but the interpretation of all that he had lacked. Phoebe gave him an affectionate regard because he needed so much love and seemed to have received so little.


prompt:
Chapter: CLIFFORD, except for Phoebe's More active instigation would ordinarily
have yielded to the torpor which had crept through all his modes of
being, and which sluggishly counselled him to sit in his morning chair
till eventide.  But the girl seldom failed to propose a removal to the
garden, where Uncle Venner and the daguerreotypist had made such
repairs on the roof of the ruinous arbor, or summer-house, that it was
now a sufficient shelter from sunshine and casual showers.  The
hop-vine, too, had begun to grow luxuriantly over the sides of the
little edifice, and made an interior of verdant seclusion, with
innumerable peeps and glimpses into the wider solitude of the garden.

Here, sometimes, in this green play-place of flickering light, Phoebe
read to Clifford.  Her acquaintance, the artist, who appeared to have a
literary turn, had supplied her with works of fiction, in pamphlet
form,--and a few volumes of poetry, in altogether a different style and
taste from those which Hepzibah selected for his amusement.  Small
thanks were due to the books, however, if the girl's readings were in
any degree more successful than her elderly cousin's.  Phoebe's voice
had always a pretty music in it, and could either enliven Clifford by
its sparkle and gayety of tone, or soothe him by a continued flow of
pebbly and brook-like cadences.  But the fictions--in which the
country-girl, unused to works of that nature, often became deeply
absorbed--interested her strange auditor very little, or not at all.
Pictures of life, scenes of passion or sentiment, wit, humor, and
pathos, were all thrown away, or worse than thrown away, on Clifford;
either because he lacked an experience by which to test their truth, or
because his own griefs were a touch-stone of reality that few feigned
emotions could withstand.  When Phoebe broke into a peal of merry
laughter at what she read, he would now and then laugh for sympathy,
         but oftener respond with a troubled, questioning look.  If a tear--a
         maiden's sunshiny tear over imaginary woe--dropped upon some melancholy
         page, Clifford either took it as a token of actual calamity, or else
         grew peevish, and angrily motioned her to close the volume.  And wisely
         too! Is not the world sad enough, in genuine earnest, without making a
         pastime of mock sorrows?

         With poetry it was rather better.  He delighted in the swell and
         subsidence of the rhythm, and the happily recurring rhyme.  Nor was
         Clifford incapable of feeling the sentiment of poetry,--not, perhaps,
         where it was highest or deepest, but where it was most flitting and
         ethereal.  It was impossible to foretell in what exquisite verse the
         awakening spell might lurk; but, on raising her eyes from the page to
         Clifford's face, Phoebe would be made aware, by the light breaking
         through it, that a more delicate intelligence than her own had caught a
         lambent flame from what she read.  One glow of this kind, however, was
         often the precursor of gloom for many hours afterward; because, when
         the glow left him, he seemed conscious of a missing sense and power,
         and groped about for them, as if a blind man should go seeking his lost
         eyesight.

         It pleased him more, and was better for his inward welfare, that Phoebe
         should talk, and make passing occurrences vivid to his mind by her
         accompanying description and remarks.  The life of the garden offered
         topics enough for such discourse as suited Clifford best.  He never
         failed to inquire what flowers had bloomed since yesterday.  His
         feeling for flowers was very exquisite, and seemed not so much a taste
         as an emotion; he was fond of sitting with one in his hand, intently
         observing it, and looking from its petals into Phoebe's face, as if the
         garden flower were the sister of the household maiden.  Not merely was
         there a delight in the flower's perfume, or pleasure in its beautiful
         form, and the delicacy or brightness of its hue; but Clifford's
         enjoyment was accompanied with a perception of life, character, and
         individuality, that made him love these blossoms of the garden, as if
         they were endowed with sentiment and intelligence.  This affection and
         sympathy for flowers is almost exclusively a woman's trait.  Men, if
         endowed with it by nature, soon lose, forget, and learn to despise it,
         in their contact with coarser things than flowers.  Clifford, too, had
         long forgotten it; but found it again now, as he slowly revived from
         the chill torpor of his life.

         It is wonderful how many pleasant incidents continually came to pass in
         that secluded garden-spot when once Phoebe had set herself to look for
         them.  She had seen or heard a bee there, on the first day of her
         acquaintance with the place.  And often,--almost continually,
         indeed,--since then, the bees kept coming thither, Heaven knows why, or
         by what pertinacious desire, for far-fetched sweets, when, no doubt,
         there were broad clover-fields, and all kinds of garden growth, much
         nearer home than this.  Thither the bees came, however, and plunged
         into the squash-blossoms, as if there were no other squash-vines within
         a long day's flight, or as if the soil of Hepzibah's garden gave its
         productions just the very quality which these laborious little wizards
         wanted, in order to impart the Hymettus odor to their whole hive of New
         England honey.  When Clifford heard their sunny, buzzing murmur, in the
         heart of the great yellow blossoms, he looked about him with a joyful
         sense of warmth, and blue sky, and green grass, and of God's free air
         in the whole height from earth to heaven.  After all, there need be no
         question why the bees came to that one green nook in the dusty town.
         God sent them thither to gladden our poor Clifford.  They brought the
         rich summer with them, in requital of a little honey.

         When the bean-vines began to flower on the poles, there was one
         particular variety which bore a vivid scarlet blossom.  The
         daguerreotypist had found these beans in a garret, over one of the
         seven gables, treasured up in an old chest of drawers by some
         horticultural Pyncheon of days gone by, who doubtless meant to sow them
         the next summer, but was himself first sown in Death's garden-ground.
         By way of testing whether there were still a living germ in such
         ancient seeds, Holgrave had planted some of them; and the result of his
         experiment was a splendid row of bean-vines, clambering, early, to the
         full height of the poles, and arraying them, from top to bottom, in a
         spiral profusion of red blossoms.  And, ever since the unfolding of the
         first bud, a multitude of humming-birds had been attracted thither.  At
         times, it seemed as if for every one of the hundred blossoms there was
         one of these tiniest fowls of the air,--a thumb's bigness of burnished
         plumage, hovering and vibrating about the bean-poles.  It was with
         indescribable interest, and even more than childish delight, that
         Clifford watched the humming-birds.   He used to thrust his head softly
         out of the arbor to see them the better; all the while, too, motioning
         Phoebe to be quiet, and snatching glimpses of the smile upon her face,
         so as to heap his enjoyment up the higher with her sympathy.  He had
         not merely grown young;--he was a child again.

         Hepzibah, whenever she happened to witness one of these fits of
         miniature enthusiasm, would shake her head, with a strange mingling of
         the mother and sister, and of pleasure and sadness, in her aspect.  She
         said that it had always been thus with Clifford when the humming-birds
         came,--always, from his babyhood,--and that his delight in them had
         been one of the earliest tokens by which he showed his love for
         beautiful things.  And it was a wonderful coincidence, the good lady
         thought, that the artist should have planted these scarlet-flowering
         beans--which the humming-birds sought far and wide, and which had not
         grown in the Pyncheon garden before for forty years--on the very summer
         of Clifford's return.

         Then would the tears stand in poor Hepzibah's eyes, or overflow them
         with a too abundant gush, so that she was fain to betake herself into
         some corner, lest Clifford should espy her agitation.  Indeed, all the
         enjoyments of this period were provocative of tears.  Coming so late as
         it did, it was a kind of Indian summer, with a mist in its balmiest
         sunshine, and decay and death in its gaudiest delight.  The more
         Clifford seemed to taste the happiness of a child, the sadder was the
         difference to be recognized.  With a mysterious and terrible Past,
         which had annihilated his memory, and a blank Future before him, he had
         only this visionary and impalpable Now, which, if you once look closely
         at it, is nothing.  He himself, as was perceptible by many symptoms,
         lay darkly behind his pleasure, and knew it to be a baby-play, which he
         was to toy and trifle with, instead of thoroughly believing.  Clifford
         saw, it may be, in the mirror of his deeper consciousness, that he was
         an example and representative of that great class of people whom an
         inexplicable Providence is continually putting at cross-purposes with
         the world:  breaking what seems its own promise in their nature;
         withholding their proper food, and setting poison before them for a
         banquet; and thus--when it might so easily, as one would think, have
         been adjusted otherwise--making their existence a strangeness, a
         solitude, and torment.  All his life long, he had been learning how to
         be wretched, as one learns a foreign tongue; and now, with the lesson
         thoroughly by heart, he could with difficulty comprehend his little
         airy happiness.  Frequently there was a dim shadow of doubt in his
         eyes.  "Take my hand, Phoebe," he would say, "and pinch it hard with
         your little fingers! Give me a rose, that I may press its thorns, and
         prove myself awake by the sharp touch of pain!"  Evidently, he desired
         this prick of a trifling anguish, in order to assure himself, by that
         quality which he best knew to be real, that the garden, and the seven
         weather-beaten gables, and Hepzibah's scowl, and Phoebe's smile, were
         real likewise.  Without this signet in his flesh, he could have
         attributed no more substance to them than to the empty confusion of
         imaginary scenes with which he had fed his spirit, until even that poor
         sustenance was exhausted.

         The author needs great faith in his reader's sympathy; else he must
         hesitate to give details so minute, and incidents apparently so
         trifling, as are essential to make up the idea of this garden-life.  It
         was the Eden of a thunder-smitten Adam, who had fled for refuge thither
         out of the same dreary and perilous wilderness into which the original
         Adam was expelled.

         One of the available means of amusement, of which Phoebe made the most
         in Clifford's behalf, was that feathered society, the hens, a breed of
         whom, as we have already said, was an immemorial heirloom in the
         Pyncheon family.  In compliance with a whim of Clifford, as it troubled
         him to see them in confinement, they had been set at liberty, and now
         roamed at will about the garden; doing some little mischief, but
         hindered from escape by buildings on three sides, and the difficult
         peaks of a wooden fence on the other.  They spent much of their
         abundant leisure on the margin of Maule's well, which was haunted by a
         kind of snail, evidently a titbit to their palates; and the brackish
         water itself, however nauseous to the rest of the world, was so greatly
         esteemed by these fowls, that they might be seen tasting, turning up
         their heads, and smacking their bills, with precisely the air of
         wine-bibbers round a probationary cask.  Their generally quiet, yet
         often brisk, and constantly diversified talk, one to another, or
         sometimes in soliloquy,--as they scratched worms out of the rich, black
         soil, or pecked at such plants as suited their taste,--had such a
         domestic tone, that it was almost a wonder why you could not establish
         a regular interchange of ideas about household matters, human and
         gallinaceous.  All hens are well worth studying for the piquancy and
         rich variety of their manners; but by no possibility can there have
         been other fowls of such odd appearance and deportment as these
         ancestral ones.  They probably embodied the traditionary peculiarities
         of their whole line of progenitors, derived through an unbroken
         succession of eggs; or else this individual Chanticleer and his two
         wives had grown to be humorists, and a little crack-brained withal, on
         account of their solitary way of life, and out of sympathy for
         Hepzibah, their lady-patroness.

         Queer, indeed, they looked! Chanticleer himself, though stalking on two
         stilt-like legs, with the dignity of interminable descent in all his
         gestures, was hardly bigger than an ordinary partridge; his two wives
         were about the size of quails; and as for the one chicken, it looked
         small enough to be still in the egg, and, at the same time,
         sufficiently old, withered, wizened, and experienced, to have been
         founder of the antiquated race.  Instead of being the youngest of the
         family, it rather seemed to have aggregated into itself the ages, not
         only of these living specimens of the breed, but of all its forefathers
         and foremothers, whose united excellences and oddities were squeezed
         into its little body.  Its mother evidently regarded it as the one
         chicken of the world, and as necessary, in fact, to the world's
         continuance, or, at any rate, to the equilibrium of the present system
         of affairs, whether in church or state.  No lesser sense of the infant
         fowl's importance could have justified, even in a mother's eyes, the
         perseverance with which she watched over its safety, ruffling her small
         person to twice its proper size, and flying in everybody's face that so
         much as looked towards her hopeful progeny.  No lower estimate could
         have vindicated the indefatigable zeal with which she scratched, and
         her unscrupulousness in digging up the choicest flower or vegetable,
         for the sake of the fat earthworm at its root.  Her nervous cluck, when
         the chicken happened to be hidden in the long grass or under the
         squash-leaves; her gentle croak of satisfaction, while sure of it
         beneath her wing; her note of ill-concealed fear and obstreperous
         defiance, when she saw her arch-enemy, a neighbor's cat, on the top of
         the high fence,--one or other of these sounds was to be heard at almost
         every moment of the day.  By degrees, the observer came to feel nearly
         as much interest in this chicken of illustrious race as the mother-hen
         did.

         Phoebe, after getting well acquainted with the old hen, was sometimes
         permitted to take the chicken in her hand, which was quite capable of
         grasping its cubic inch or two of body.  While she curiously examined
         its hereditary marks,--the peculiar speckle of its plumage, the funny
         tuft on its head, and a knob on each of its legs,--the little biped, as
         she insisted, kept giving her a sagacious wink.  The daguerreotypist
         once whispered her that these marks betokened the oddities of the
         Pyncheon family, and that the chicken itself was a symbol of the life
         of the old house, embodying its interpretation, likewise, although an
         unintelligible one, as such clews generally are.  It was a feathered
         riddle; a mystery hatched out of an egg, and just as mysterious as if
         the egg had been addle!

         The second of Chanticleer's two wives, ever since Phoebe's arrival, had
         been in a state of heavy despondency, caused, as it afterwards
         appeared, by her inability to lay an egg.  One day, however, by her
         self-important gait, the sideways turn of her head, and the cock of her
         eye, as she pried into one and another nook of the garden,--croaking to
         herself, all the while, with inexpressible complacency,--it was made
         evident that this identical hen, much as mankind undervalued her,
         carried something about her person the worth of which was not to be
         estimated either in gold or precious stones.  Shortly after, there was
         a prodigious cackling and gratulation of Chanticleer and all his
         family, including the wizened chicken, who appeared to understand the
         matter quite as well as did his sire, his mother, or his aunt.  That
         afternoon Phoebe found a diminutive egg,--not in the regular nest, it
         was far too precious to be trusted there,--but cunningly hidden under
         the currant-bushes, on some dry stalks of last year's grass.  Hepzibah,
         on learning the fact, took possession of the egg and appropriated it to
         Clifford's breakfast, on account of a certain delicacy of flavor, for
         which, as she affirmed, these eggs had always been famous.  Thus
         unscrupulously did the old gentlewoman sacrifice the continuance,
         perhaps, of an ancient feathered race, with no better end than to
         supply her brother with a dainty that hardly filled the bowl of a
         tea-spoon! It must have been in reference to this outrage that
         Chanticleer, the next day, accompanied by the bereaved mother of the
         egg, took his post in front of Phoebe and Clifford, and delivered
         himself of a harangue that might have proved as long as his own
         pedigree, but for a fit of merriment on Phoebe's part.  Hereupon, the
         offended fowl stalked away on his long stilts, and utterly withdrew his
         notice from Phoebe and the rest of human nature, until she made her
         peace with an offering of spice-cake, which, next to snails, was the
         delicacy most in favor with his aristocratic taste.

         We linger too long, no doubt, beside this paltry rivulet of life that
         flowed through the garden of the Pyncheon House.  But we deem it
         pardonable to record these mean incidents and poor delights, because
         they proved so greatly to Clifford's benefit.  They had the earth-smell
         in them, and contributed to give him health and substance.  Some of his
         occupations wrought less desirably upon him.  He had a singular
         propensity, for example, to hang over Maule's well, and look at the
         constantly shifting phantasmagoria of figures produced by the agitation
         of the water over the mosaic-work of colored pebbles at the bottom.  He
         said that faces looked upward to him there,--beautiful faces, arrayed
         in bewitching smiles,--each momentary face so fair and rosy, and every
         smile so sunny, that he felt wronged at its departure, until the same
         flitting witchcraft made a new one.  But sometimes he would suddenly
         cry out, "The dark face gazes at me!" and be miserable the whole day
         afterwards.  Phoebe, when she hung over the fountain by Clifford's
         side, could see nothing of all this,--neither the beauty nor the
         ugliness,--but only the colored pebbles, looking as if the gush of the
         waters shook and disarranged them.  And the dark face, that so troubled
         Clifford, was no more than the shadow thrown from a branch of one of
         the damson-trees, and breaking the inner light of Maule's well.  The
         truth was, however, that his fancy--reviving faster than his will and
         judgment, and always stronger than they--created shapes of loveliness
         that were symbolic of his native character, and now and then a stern
         and dreadful shape that typified his fate.

         On Sundays, after Phoebe had been at church,--for the girl had a
         church-going conscience, and would hardly have been at ease had she
         missed either prayer, singing, sermon, or benediction,--after
         church-time, therefore, there was, ordinarily, a sober little festival
         in the garden.  In addition to Clifford, Hepzibah, and Phoebe, two
         guests made up the company.  One was the artist Holgrave, who, in spite
         of his consociation with reformers, and his other queer and
         questionable traits, continued to hold an elevated place in Hepzibah's
         regard.  The other, we are almost ashamed to say, was the venerable
         Uncle Venner, in a clean shirt, and a broadcloth coat, more respectable
         than his ordinary wear, inasmuch as it was neatly patched on each
         elbow, and might be called an entire garment, except for a slight
         inequality in the length of its skirts.   Clifford, on several
         occasions, had seemed to enjoy the old man's intercourse, for the sake
         of his mellow, cheerful vein, which was like the sweet flavor of a
         frost-bitten apple, such as one picks up under the tree in December.  A
         man at the very lowest point of the social scale was easier and more
         agreeable for the fallen gentleman to encounter than a person at any of
         the intermediate degrees; and, moreover, as Clifford's young manhood
         had been lost, he was fond of feeling himself comparatively youthful,
         now, in apposition with the patriarchal age of Uncle Venner.  In fact,
         it was sometimes observable that Clifford half wilfully hid from
         himself the consciousness of being stricken in years, and cherished
         visions of an earthly future still before him; visions, however, too
         indistinctly drawn to be followed by disappointment--though, doubtless,
         by depression--when any casual incident or recollection made him
         sensible of the withered leaf.

         So this oddly composed little social party used to assemble under the
         ruinous arbor.  Hepzibah--stately as ever at heart, and yielding not an
         inch of her old gentility, but resting upon it so much the more, as
         justifying a princess-like condescension--exhibited a not ungraceful
         hospitality.   She talked kindly to the vagrant artist, and took sage
         counsel--lady as she was--with the wood-sawyer, the messenger of
         everybody's petty errands, the patched philosopher.  And Uncle Venner,
         who had studied the world at street-corners, and other posts equally
         well adapted for just observation, was as ready to give out his wisdom
         as a town-pump to give water.

         "Miss Hepzibah, ma'am," said he once, after they had all been cheerful
         together, "I really enjoy these quiet little meetings of a Sabbath
         afternoon.  They are very much like what I expect to have after I
         retire to my farm!"

         "Uncle Venner" observed Clifford in a drowsy, inward tone, "is always
         talking about his farm.  But I have a better scheme for him, by and by.
         We shall see!"

         "Ah, Mr. Clifford Pyncheon!" said the man of patches, "you may scheme
         for me as much as you please; but I'm not going to give up this one
         scheme of my own, even if I never bring it really to pass.  It does
         seem to me that men make a wonderful mistake in trying to heap up
         property upon property.  If I had done so, I should feel as if
         Providence was not bound to take care of me; and, at all events, the
         city wouldn't be! I'm one of those people who think that infinity is
         big enough for us all--and eternity long enough."

         "Why, so they are, Uncle Venner," remarked Phoebe after a pause; for
         she had been trying to fathom the profundity and appositeness of this
         concluding apothegm.  "But for this short life of ours, one would like
         a house and a moderate garden-spot of one's own."

         "It appears to me," said the daguerreotypist, smiling, "that Uncle
         Venner has the principles of Fourier at the bottom of his wisdom; only
         they have not quite so much distinctness in his mind as in that of the
         systematizing Frenchman."

         "Come, Phoebe," said Hepzibah, "it is time to bring the currants."

         And then, while the yellow richness of the declining sunshine still
         fell into the open space of the garden, Phoebe brought out a loaf of
         bread and a china bowl of currants, freshly gathered from the bushes,
         and crushed with sugar.  These, with water,--but not from the fountain
         of ill omen, close at hand,--constituted all the entertainment.
         Meanwhile, Holgrave took some pains to establish an intercourse with
         Clifford, actuated, it might seem, entirely by an impulse of
         kindliness, in order that the present hour might be cheerfuller than
         most which the poor recluse had spent, or was destined yet to spend.
         Nevertheless, in the artist's deep, thoughtful, all-observant eyes,
         there was, now and then, an expression, not sinister, but questionable;
as if he had some other interest in the scene than a stranger, a
youthful and unconnected adventurer, might be supposed to have.  With
great mobility of outward mood, however, he applied himself to the task
of enlivening the party; and with so much success, that even dark-hued
Hepzibah threw off one tint of melancholy, and made what shift she
could with the remaining portion.  Phoebe said to herself,--"How
pleasant he can be!"  As for Uncle Venner, as a mark of friendship and
approbation, he readily consented to afford the young man his
countenance in the way of his profession,--not metaphorically, be it
understood, but literally, by allowing a daguerreotype of his face, so
familiar to the town, to be exhibited at the entrance of Holgrave's
studio.

Clifford, as the company partook of their little banquet, grew to be
the gayest of them all.  Either it was one of those up-quivering
flashes of the spirit, to which minds in an abnormal state are liable,
        or else the artist had subtly touched some chord that made musical
        vibration.  Indeed, what with the pleasant summer evening, and the
        sympathy of this little circle of not unkindly souls, it was perhaps
        natural that a character so susceptible as Clifford's should become
        animated, and show itself readily responsive to what was said around
        him.  But he gave out his own thoughts, likewise, with an airy and
        fanciful glow; so that they glistened, as it were, through the arbor,
        and made their escape among the interstices of the foliage.  He had
        been as cheerful, no doubt, while alone with Phoebe, but never with
        such tokens of acute, although partial intelligence.

        But, as the sunlight left the peaks of the Seven Gables, so did the
        excitement fade out of Clifford's eyes.  He gazed vaguely and
        mournfully about him, as if he missed something precious, and missed it
        the more drearily for not knowing precisely what it was.

        "I want my happiness!" at last he murmured hoarsely and indistinctly,
        hardly shaping out the words.  "Many, many years have I waited for it!
        It is late! It is late! I want my happiness!"

        Alas, poor Clifford! You are old, and worn with troubles that ought
        never to have befallen you.  You are partly crazy and partly imbecile;
        a ruin, a failure, as almost everybody is,--though some in less degree,
        or less perceptibly, than their fellows.  Fate has no happiness in
        store for you; unless your quiet home in the old family residence with
        the faithful Hepzibah, and your long summer afternoons with Phoebe, and
        these Sabbath festivals with Uncle Venner and the daguerreotypist,
        deserve to be called happiness!  Why not? If not the thing itself, it
        is marvellously like it, and the more so for that ethereal and
        intangible quality which causes it all to vanish at too close an
        introspection.  Take it, therefore, while you may. Murmur
        not,--question not,--but make the most of it!

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The Pyncheon Garden: Phoebe would often read to Clifford in the garden. Holgrave would supply her works of fiction and poetry; the fiction did not interest Clifford, either because he lacked experience to test the fiction or because his grief was a touchstone of reality that few feigned emotions could withstand. He preferred poetry to fiction, and even more than reading preferred to discuss the flowers and life in the garden. As Clifford tasted more happiness, he became more sad: with a mysterious and terrible past and a blank future, he had only this visionary and impalpable now. For Clifford the garden was an Eden. The small hens amused Clifford. They were an immemorial heirloom in the Pyncheon family, tiny and queer looking. On Sundays after church there was ordinarily a little festival in the garden attended by Clifford, Hepzibah, Phoebe, Holgrave and Uncle Venner. Holgrave took pains to establish an intercourse with Clifford, but there was something questionable about his actions.