Chapter: PHOEBE PYNCHEON slept, on the night of her arrival, in a chamber that
looked down on the garden of the old house.  It fronted towards the
east, so that at a very seasonable hour a glow of crimson light came
flooding through the window, and bathed the dingy ceiling and
paper-hangings in its own hue.  There were curtains to Phoebe's bed; a
dark, antique canopy, and ponderous festoons of a stuff which had been
rich, and even magnificent, in its time; but which now brooded over the
girl like a cloud, making a night in that one corner, while elsewhere
it was beginning to be day.  The morning light, however, soon stole
into the aperture at the foot of the bed, betwixt those faded curtains.
Finding the new guest there,--with a bloom on her cheeks like the
morning's own, and a gentle stir of departing slumber in her limbs, as
when an early breeze moves the foliage,--the dawn kissed her brow.  It
was the caress which a dewy maiden--such as the Dawn is,
    immortally--gives to her sleeping sister, partly from the impulse of
    irresistible fondness, and partly as a pretty hint that it is time now
    to unclose her eyes.

    At the touch of those lips of light, Phoebe quietly awoke, and, for a
    moment, did not recognize where she was, nor how those heavy curtains
    chanced to be festooned around her.  Nothing, indeed, was absolutely
    plain to her, except that it was now early morning, and that, whatever
    might happen next, it was proper, first of all, to get up and say her
    prayers.  She was the more inclined to devotion from the grim aspect of
    the chamber and its furniture, especially the tall, stiff chairs; one
    of which stood close by her bedside, and looked as if some
    old-fashioned personage had been sitting there all night, and had
    vanished only just in season to escape discovery.

    When Phoebe was quite dressed, she peeped out of the window, and saw a
    rosebush in the garden.  Being a very tall one, and of luxuriant
    growth, it had been propped up against the side of the house, and was
    literally covered with a rare and very beautiful species of white rose.
    A large portion of them, as the girl afterwards discovered, had blight
    or mildew at their hearts; but, viewed at a fair distance, the whole
    rosebush looked as if it had been brought from Eden that very summer,
    together with the mould in which it grew.  The truth was, nevertheless,
    that it had been planted by Alice Pyncheon,--she was Phoebe's
    great-great-grand-aunt,--in soil which, reckoning only its cultivation
    as a garden-plat, was now unctuous with nearly two hundred years of
    vegetable decay.  Growing as they did, however, out of the old earth,
    the flowers still sent a fresh and sweet incense up to their Creator;
nor could it have been the less pure and acceptable because Phoebe's
young breath mingled with it, as the fragrance floated past the window.
Hastening down the creaking and carpetless staircase, she found her way
into the garden, gathered some of the most perfect of the roses, and
brought them to her chamber.

Little Phoebe was one of those persons who possess, as their exclusive
patrimony, the gift of practical arrangement.  It is a kind of natural
magic that enables these favored ones to bring out the hidden
capabilities of things around them; and particularly to give a look of
comfort and habitableness to any place which, for however brief a
period, may happen to be their home.  A wild hut of underbrush, tossed
together by wayfarers through the primitive forest, would acquire the
home aspect by one night's lodging of such a woman, and would retain it
long after her quiet figure had disappeared into the surrounding shade.
No less a portion of such homely witchcraft was requisite to reclaim,
   as it were, Phoebe's waste, cheerless, and dusky chamber, which had
   been untenanted so long--except by spiders, and mice, and rats, and
   ghosts--that it was all overgrown with the desolation which watches to
   obliterate every trace of man's happier hours.  What was precisely
   Phoebe's process we find it impossible to say.  She appeared to have no
   preliminary design, but gave a touch here and another there; brought
   some articles of furniture to light and dragged others into the shadow;
   looped up or let down a window-curtain; and, in the course of half an
   hour, had fully succeeded in throwing a kindly and hospitable smile
   over the apartment.  No longer ago than the night before, it had
   resembled nothing so much as the old maid's heart; for there was
   neither sunshine nor household fire in one nor the other, and, save for
   ghosts and ghostly reminiscences, not a guest, for many years gone by,
   had entered the heart or the chamber.

   There was still another peculiarity of this inscrutable charm.  The
   bedchamber, no doubt, was a chamber of very great and varied
   experience, as a scene of human life:  the joy of bridal nights had
   throbbed itself away here; new immortals had first drawn earthly breath
   here; and here old people had died.  But--whether it were the white
   roses, or whatever the subtile influence might be--a person of delicate
   instinct would have known at once that it was now a maiden's
   bedchamber, and had been purified of all former evil and sorrow by her
   sweet breath and happy thoughts.  Her dreams of the past night, being
   such cheerful ones, had exorcised the gloom, and now haunted the
   chamber in its stead.

   After arranging matters to her satisfaction, Phoebe emerged from her
   chamber, with a purpose to descend again into the garden.  Besides the
   rosebush, she had observed several other species of flowers growing
   there in a wilderness of neglect, and obstructing one another's
   development (as is often the parallel case in human society) by their
   uneducated entanglement and confusion.  At the head of the stairs,
   however, she met Hepzibah, who, it being still early, invited her into
   a room which she would probably have called her boudoir, had her
   education embraced any such French phrase.  It was strewn about with a
   few old books, and a work-basket, and a dusty writing-desk; and had, on
   one side, a large black article of furniture, of very strange
   appearance, which the old gentlewoman told Phoebe was a harpsichord.
   It looked more like a coffin than anything else; and, indeed,--not
   having been played upon, or opened, for years,--there must have been a
   vast deal of dead music in it, stifled for want of air.  Human finger
   was hardly known to have touched its chords since the days of Alice
   Pyncheon, who had learned the sweet accomplishment of melody in Europe.

   Hepzibah bade her young guest sit down, and, herself taking a chair
   near by, looked as earnestly at Phoebe's trim little figure as if she
   expected to see right into its springs and motive secrets.

   "Cousin Phoebe," said she, at last, "I really can't see my way clear to
   keep you with me."

   These words, however, had not the inhospitable bluntness with which
   they may strike the reader; for the two relatives, in a talk before
   bedtime, had arrived at a certain degree of mutual understanding.
   Hepzibah knew enough to enable her to appreciate the circumstances
   (resulting from the second marriage of the girl's mother) which made it
   desirable for Phoebe to establish herself in another home.  Nor did she
   misinterpret Phoebe's character, and the genial activity pervading
   it,--one of the most valuable traits of the true New England
   woman,--which had impelled her forth, as might be said, to seek her
   fortune, but with a self-respecting purpose to confer as much benefit
   as she could anywise receive.  As one of her nearest kindred, she had
   naturally betaken herself to Hepzibah, with no idea of forcing herself
   on her cousin's protection, but only for a visit of a week or two,
   which might be indefinitely extended, should it prove for the happiness
   of both.

   To Hepzibah's blunt observation, therefore, Phoebe replied as frankly,
   and more cheerfully.

   "Dear cousin, I cannot tell how it will be," said she.  "But I really
   think we may suit one another much better than you suppose."

   "You are a nice girl,--I see it plainly," continued Hepzibah; "and it
   is not any question as to that point which makes me hesitate.  But,
   Phoebe, this house of mine is but a melancholy place for a young person
   to be in.  It lets in the wind and rain, and the snow, too, in the
   garret and upper chambers, in winter-time, but it never lets in the
   sunshine.  And as for myself, you see what I am,--a dismal and lonesome
   old woman (for I begin to call myself old, Phoebe), whose temper, I am
   afraid, is none of the best, and whose spirits are as bad as can be! I
   cannot make your life pleasant, Cousin Phoebe, neither can I so much as
   give you bread to eat."

   "You will find me a cheerful little body" answered Phoebe, smiling, and
   yet with a kind of gentle dignity, "and I mean to earn my bread.  You
   know I have not been brought up a Pyncheon.  A girl learns many things
   in a New England village."

   "Ah! Phoebe," said Hepzibah, sighing, "your knowledge would do but
   little for you here! And then it is a wretched thought that you should
   fling away your young days in a place like this.  Those cheeks would
   not be so rosy after a month or two.  Look at my face!" and, indeed,
   the contrast was very striking,--"you see how pale I am! It is my idea
   that the dust and continual decay of these old houses are unwholesome
   for the lungs."

   "There is the garden,--the flowers to be taken care of," observed
   Phoebe.  "I should keep myself healthy with exercise in the open air."

   "And, after all, child," exclaimed Hepzibah, suddenly rising, as if to
   dismiss the subject, "it is not for me to say who shall be a guest or
   inhabitant of the old Pyncheon House.  Its master is coming."

   "Do you mean Judge Pyncheon?" asked Phoebe in surprise.

   "Judge Pyncheon!" answered her cousin angrily.  "He will hardly cross
   the threshold while I live! No, no! But, Phoebe, you shall see the face
   of him I speak of."

   She went in quest of the miniature already described, and returned with
   it in her hand.  Giving it to Phoebe, she watched her features
   narrowly, and with a certain jealousy as to the mode in which the girl
   would show herself affected by the picture.

   "How do you like the face?" asked Hepzibah.

   "It is handsome!--it is very beautiful!" said Phoebe admiringly.  "It
   is as sweet a face as a man's can be, or ought to be.  It has something
   of a child's expression,--and yet not childish,--only one feels so very
   kindly towards him! He ought never to suffer anything.  One would bear
   much for the sake of sparing him toil or sorrow.  Who is it, Cousin
   Hepzibah?"

   "Did you never hear," whispered her cousin, bending towards her, "of
   Clifford Pyncheon?"

   "Never.  I thought there were no Pyncheons left, except yourself and
   our cousin Jaffrey," answered Phoebe.  "And yet I seem to have heard
   the name of Clifford Pyncheon.  Yes!--from my father or my mother; but
   has he not been a long while dead?"

   "Well, well, child, perhaps he has!" said Hepzibah with a sad, hollow
   laugh; "but, in old houses like this, you know, dead people are very
   apt to come back again! We shall see.  And, Cousin Phoebe, since, after
   all that I have said, your courage does not fail you, we will not part
   so soon.  You are welcome, my child, for the present, to such a home as
   your kinswoman can offer you."

   With this measured, but not exactly cold assurance of a hospitable
   purpose, Hepzibah kissed her cheek.

   They now went below stairs, where Phoebe--not so much assuming the
   office as attracting it to herself, by the magnetism of innate
   fitness--took the most active part in preparing breakfast.  The
   mistress of the house, meanwhile, as is usual with persons of her stiff
   and unmalleable cast, stood mostly aside; willing to lend her aid, yet
   conscious that her natural inaptitude would be likely to impede the
   business in hand.   Phoebe and the fire that boiled the teakettle were
   equally bright, cheerful, and efficient, in their respective offices.
   Hepzibah gazed forth from her habitual sluggishness, the necessary
   result of long solitude, as from another sphere.  She could not help
   being interested, however, and even amused, at the readiness with which
   her new inmate adapted herself to the circumstances, and brought the
   house, moreover, and all its rusty old appliances, into a suitableness
   for her purposes.  Whatever she did, too, was done without conscious
   effort, and with frequent outbreaks of song, which were exceedingly
   pleasant to the ear.  This natural tunefulness made Phoebe seem like a
   bird in a shadowy tree; or conveyed the idea that the stream of life
   warbled through her heart as a brook sometimes warbles through a
   pleasant little dell.  It betokened the cheeriness of an active
   temperament, finding joy in its activity, and, therefore, rendering it
   beautiful; it was a New England trait,--the stern old stuff of
   Puritanism with a gold thread in the web.

   Hepzibah brought out some old silver spoons with the family crest upon
   them, and a china tea-set painted over with grotesque figures of man,
   bird, and beast, in as grotesque a landscape.  These pictured people
   were odd humorists, in a world of their own,--a world of vivid
   brilliancy, so far as color went, and still unfaded, although the
   teapot and small cups were as ancient as the custom itself of
   tea-drinking.

   "Your great-great-great-great-grandmother had these cups, when she was
   married," said Hepzibah to Phoebe.  "She was a Davenport, of a good
   family.  They were almost the first teacups ever seen in the colony;
   and if one of them were to be broken, my heart would break with it.
   But it is nonsense to speak so about a brittle teacup, when I remember
   what my heart has gone through without breaking."

   The cups--not having been used, perhaps, since Hepzibah's youth--had
   contracted no small burden of dust, which Phoebe washed away with so
   much care and delicacy as to satisfy even the proprietor of this
   invaluable china.

   "What a nice little housewife you are!" exclaimed the latter, smiling,
   and at the same time frowning so prodigiously that the smile was
   sunshine under a thunder-cloud.  "Do you do other things as well?   Are
   you as good at your book as you are at washing teacups?"

   "Not quite, I am afraid," said Phoebe, laughing at the form of
   Hepzibah's question.  "But I was schoolmistress for the little children
   in our district last summer, and might have been so still."

   "Ah! 'tis all very well!" observed the maiden lady, drawing herself up.
   "But these things must have come to you with your mother's blood.  I
   never knew a Pyncheon that had any turn for them."

   It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally
   quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their
   available gifts; as was Hepzibah of this native inapplicability, so to
   speak, of the Pyncheons to any useful purpose.  She regarded it as an
   hereditary trait; and so, perhaps, it was, but unfortunately a morbid
   one, such as is often generated in families that remain long above the
   surface of society.

   Before they left the breakfast-table, the shop-bell rang sharply, and
   Hepzibah set down the remnant of her final cup of tea, with a look of
   sallow despair that was truly piteous to behold.  In cases of
   distasteful occupation, the second day is generally worse than the
   first.  We return to the rack with all the soreness of the preceding
   torture in our limbs.  At all events, Hepzibah had fully satisfied
   herself of the impossibility of ever becoming wonted to this peevishly
   obstreperous little bell.  Ring as often as it might, the sound always
   smote upon her nervous system rudely and suddenly.  And especially now,
   while, with her crested teaspoons and antique china, she was flattering
   herself with ideas of gentility, she felt an unspeakable disinclination
   to confront a customer.

   "Do not trouble yourself, dear cousin!" cried Phoebe, starting lightly
   up.  "I am shop-keeper to-day."

   "You, child!" exclaimed Hepzibah.  "What can a little country girl know
   of such matters?"

   "Oh, I have done all the shopping for the family at our village store,"
   said Phoebe.  "And I have had a table at a fancy fair, and made better
   sales than anybody.  These things are not to be learnt; they depend
   upon a knack that comes, I suppose," added she, smiling, "with one's
   mother's blood.  You shall see that I am as nice a little saleswoman as
   I am a housewife!"

   The old gentlewoman stole behind Phoebe, and peeped from the passageway
   into the shop, to note how she would manage her undertaking.  It was a
   case of some intricacy.  A very ancient woman, in a white short gown
   and a green petticoat, with a string of gold beads about her neck, and
   what looked like a nightcap on her head, had brought a quantity of yarn
   to barter for the commodities of the shop.  She was probably the very
   last person in town who still kept the time-honored spinning-wheel in
   constant revolution.  It was worth while to hear the croaking and
   hollow tones of the old lady, and the pleasant voice of Phoebe,
   mingling in one twisted thread of talk; and still better to contrast
   their figures,--so light and bloomy,--so decrepit and dusky,--with only
   the counter betwixt them, in one sense, but more than threescore years,
   in another.  As for the bargain, it was wrinkled slyness and craft
   pitted against native truth and sagacity.

   "Was not that well done?" asked Phoebe, laughing, when the customer was
   gone.

   "Nicely done, indeed, child!" answered Hepzibah.  "I could not have
   gone through with it nearly so well.  As you say, it must be a knack
   that belongs to you on the mother's side."

   It is a very genuine admiration, that with which persons too shy or too
   awkward to take a due part in the bustling world regard the real actors
   in life's stirring scenes; so genuine, in fact, that the former are
   usually fain to make it palatable to their self-love, by assuming that
   these active and forcible qualities are incompatible with others, which
   they choose to deem higher and more important.  Thus, Hepzibah was well
   content to acknowledge Phoebe's vastly superior gifts as a
   shop-keeper'--she listened, with compliant ear, to her suggestion of
   various methods whereby the influx of trade might be increased, and
   rendered profitable, without a hazardous outlay of capital.  She
   consented that the village maiden should manufacture yeast, both liquid
   and in cakes; and should brew a certain kind of beer, nectareous to the
   palate, and of rare stomachic virtues; and, moreover, should bake and
   exhibit for sale some little spice-cakes, which whosoever tasted would
   longingly desire to taste again.  All such proofs of a ready mind and
   skilful handiwork were highly acceptable to the aristocratic
   hucksteress, so long as she could murmur to herself with a grim smile,
   and a half-natural sigh, and a sentiment of mixed wonder, pity, and
   growing affection:--

   "What a nice little body she is! If she only could be a lady; too--but
   that's impossible! Phoebe is no Pyncheon.  She takes everything from
   her mother!"

   As to Phoebe's not being a lady, or whether she were a lady or no, it
   was a point, perhaps, difficult to decide, but which could hardly have
   come up for judgment at all in any fair and healthy mind.  Out of New
   England, it would be impossible to meet with a person combining so many
   ladylike attributes with so many others that form no necessary (if
           compatible) part of the character.  She shocked no canon of taste; she
   was admirably in keeping with herself, and never jarred against
   surrounding circumstances.  Her figure, to be sure,--so small as to be
   almost childlike, and so elastic that motion seemed as easy or easier
   to it than rest, would hardly have suited one's idea of a countess.
   Neither did her face--with the brown ringlets on either side, and the
   slightly piquant nose, and the wholesome bloom, and the clear shade of
   tan, and the half dozen freckles, friendly remembrances of the April
   sun and breeze--precisely give us a right to call her beautiful.  But
   there was both lustre and depth in her eyes.  She was very pretty; as
   graceful as a bird, and graceful much in the same way; as pleasant
   about the house as a gleam of sunshine falling on the floor through a
   shadow of twinkling leaves, or as a ray of firelight that dances on the
   wall while evening is drawing nigh.   Instead of discussing her claim
   to rank among ladies, it would be preferable to regard Phoebe as the
   example of feminine grace and availability combined, in a state of
   society, if there were any such, where ladies did not exist.  There it
   should be woman's office to move in the midst of practical affairs, and
   to gild them all, the very homeliest,--were it even the scouring of
   pots and kettles,--with an atmosphere of loveliness and joy.

   Such was the sphere of Phoebe.  To find the born and educated lady, on
   the other hand, we need look no farther than Hepzibah, our forlorn old
   maid, in her rustling and rusty silks, with her deeply cherished and
   ridiculous consciousness of long descent, her shadowy claims to
   princely territory, and, in the way of accomplishment, her
   recollections, it may be, of having formerly thrummed on a harpsichord,
   and walked a minuet, and worked an antique tapestry-stitch on her
   sampler.  It was a fair parallel between new Plebeianism and old
   Gentility.

   It really seemed as if the battered visage of the House of the Seven
   Gables, black and heavy-browed as it still certainly looked, must have
   shown a kind of cheerfulness glimmering through its dusky windows as
   Phoebe passed to and fro in the interior.  Otherwise, it is impossible
   to explain how the people of the neighborhood so soon became aware of
   the girl's presence.  There was a great run of custom, setting steadily
   in, from about ten o' clock until towards noon,--relaxing, somewhat, at
   dinner-time, but recommencing in the afternoon, and, finally, dying
   away a half an hour or so before the long day's sunset.  One of the
   stanchest patrons was little Ned Higgins, the devourer of Jim Crow and
   the elephant, who to-day signalized his omnivorous prowess by
   swallowing two dromedaries and a locomotive.  Phoebe laughed, as she
   summed up her aggregate of sales upon the slate; while Hepzibah, first
   drawing on a pair of silk gloves, reckoned over the sordid accumulation
   of copper coin, not without silver intermixed, that had jingled into
   the till.

   "We must renew our stock, Cousin Hepzibah!" cried the little
   saleswoman.  "The gingerbread figures are all gone, and so are those
   Dutch wooden milkmaids, and most of our other playthings.  There has
   been constant inquiry for cheap raisins, and a great cry for whistles,
   and trumpets, and jew's-harps; and at least a dozen little boys have
   asked for molasses-candy.  And we must contrive to get a peck of russet
   apples, late in the season as it is.  But, dear cousin, what an
   enormous heap of copper!  Positively a copper mountain!"

   "Well done! well done! well done!" quoth Uncle Venner, who had taken
   occasion to shuffle in and out of the shop several times in the course
   of the day.  "Here's a girl that will never end her days at my farm!
   Bless my eyes, what a brisk little soul!"

   "Yes, Phoebe is a nice girl!" said Hepzibah, with a scowl of austere
   approbation.  "But, Uncle Venner, you have known the family a great
   many years.  Can you tell me whether there ever was a Pyncheon whom she
   takes after?"

   "I don't believe there ever was," answered the venerable man.  "At any
   rate, it never was my luck to see her like among them, nor, for that
   matter, anywhere else.  I've seen a great deal of the world, not only
   in people's kitchens and back-yards but at the street-corners, and on
   the wharves, and in other places where my business calls me; and I'm
   free to say, Miss Hepzibah, that I never knew a human creature do her
   work so much like one of God's angels as this child Phoebe does!"

   Uncle Venner's eulogium, if it appear rather too high-strained for the
   person and occasion, had, nevertheless, a sense in which it was both
   subtile and true.  There was a spiritual quality in Phoebe's activity.
   The life of the long and busy day--spent in occupations that might so
   easily have taken a squalid and ugly aspect--had been made pleasant,
   and even lovely, by the spontaneous grace with which these homely
   duties seemed to bloom out of her character; so that labor, while she
   dealt with it, had the easy and flexible charm of play.  Angels do not
   toil, but let their good works grow out of them; and so did Phoebe.

   The two relatives--the young maid and the old one--found time before
   nightfall, in the intervals of trade, to make rapid advances towards
   affection and confidence.  A recluse, like Hepzibah, usually displays
   remarkable frankness, and at least temporary affability, on being
   absolutely cornered, and brought to the point of personal intercourse;
   like the angel whom Jacob wrestled with, she is ready to bless you when
   once overcome.

   The old gentlewoman took a dreary and proud satisfaction in leading
   Phoebe from room to room of the house, and recounting the traditions
   with which, as we may say, the walls were lugubriously frescoed.  She
   showed the indentations made by the lieutenant-governor's sword-hilt in
   the door-panels of the apartment where old Colonel Pyncheon, a dead
   host, had received his affrighted visitors with an awful frown.  The
   dusky terror of that frown, Hepzibah observed, was thought to be
   lingering ever since in the passageway.  She bade Phoebe step into one
   of the tall chairs, and inspect the ancient map of the Pyncheon
   territory at the eastward.  In a tract of land on which she laid her
   finger, there existed a silver mine, the locality of which was
   precisely pointed out in some memoranda of Colonel Pyncheon himself,
   but only to be made known when the family claim should be recognized by
   government.  Thus it was for the interest of all New England that the
   Pyncheons should have justice done them.  She told, too, how that there
   was undoubtedly an immense treasure of English guineas hidden somewhere
   about the house, or in the cellar, or possibly in the garden.

   "If you should happen to find it, Phoebe," said Hepzibah, glancing
   aside at her with a grim yet kindly smile, "we will tie up the
   shop-bell for good and all!"

   "Yes, dear cousin," answered Phoebe; "but, in the mean time, I hear
   somebody ringing it!"

   When the customer was gone, Hepzibah talked rather vaguely, and at
   great length, about a certain Alice Pyncheon, who had been exceedingly
   beautiful and accomplished in her lifetime, a hundred years ago.  The
   fragrance of her rich and delightful character still lingered about the
   place where she had lived, as a dried rose-bud scents the drawer where
   it has withered and perished.  This lovely Alice had met with some
   great and mysterious calamity, and had grown thin and white, and
   gradually faded out of the world.  But, even now, she was supposed to
   haunt the House of the Seven Gables, and, a great many times,--especially
   when one of the Pyncheons was to die,--she had been heard playing sadly
   and beautifully on the harpsichord.  One of these tunes, just as it had
   sounded from her spiritual touch, had been written down by an amateur of
   music; it was so exquisitely mournful that nobody, to this day, could
   bear to hear it played, unless when a great sorrow had made them know
   the still profounder sweetness of it.

   "Was it the same harpsichord that you showed me?" inquired Phoebe.

   "The very same," said Hepzibah.  "It was Alice Pyncheon's harpsichord.
   When I was learning music, my father would never let me open it.  So,
   as I could only play on my teacher's instrument, I have forgotten all
   my music long ago."

   Leaving these antique themes, the old lady began to talk about the
   daguerreotypist, whom, as he seemed to be a well-meaning and orderly
   young man, and in narrow circumstances, she had permitted to take up
   his residence in one of the seven gables.  But, on seeing more of Mr.
   Holgrave, she hardly knew what to make of him.  He had the strangest
   companions imaginable; men with long beards, and dressed in linen
   blouses, and other such new-fangled and ill-fitting garments;
   reformers, temperance lecturers, and all manner of cross-looking
   philanthropists; community-men, and come-outers, as Hepzibah believed,
   who acknowledged no law, and ate no solid food, but lived on the scent
   of other people's cookery, and turned up their noses at the fare.  As
   for the daguerreotypist, she had read a paragraph in a penny paper, the
   other day, accusing him of making a speech full of wild and
   disorganizing matter, at a meeting of his banditti-like associates.
   For her own part, she had reason to believe that he practised animal
   magnetism, and, if such things were in fashion nowadays, should be apt
   to suspect him of studying the Black Art up there in his lonesome
   chamber.

   "But, dear cousin," said Phoebe, "if the young man is so dangerous, why
   do you let him stay? If he does nothing worse, he may set the house on
   fire!"

   "Why, sometimes," answered Hepzibah, "I have seriously made it a
   question, whether I ought not to send him away.  But, with all his
   oddities, he is a quiet kind of a person, and has such a way of taking
   hold of one's mind, that, without exactly liking him (for I don't know
           enough of the young man), I should be sorry to lose sight of him
   entirely.  A woman clings to slight acquaintances when she lives so
   much alone as I do."

   "But if Mr. Holgrave is a lawless person!" remonstrated Phoebe, a part
   of whose essence it was to keep within the limits of law.

   "Oh!" said Hepzibah carelessly,--for, formal as she was, still, in her
   life's experience, she had gnashed her teeth against human law,--"I
   suppose he has a law of his own!"

 Phoebe wakes up the next morning in a room overlooking the garden. She sees a lush rosebush that had been planted generations before by Alice Pyncheon. Phoebe rearranges the old, dusty room to try to make it more lovely and homey. She emerges dressed and ready for the day. Hepzibah and Phoebe chat over breakfast. Phoebe has been trying to get out of the house because her father has just remarried and she doesn't like her stepmother. Phoebe wants to come and live at the House of the Seven Gables. Hepzibah says she can't because it's too sad a place for a young girl. Phoebe insists that she is cheerful and that she will happily earn her keep. Hepzibah then pulls out her miniature portrait. She explains that the portrait is of Clifford Pyncheon. Phoebe has never heard of him. She thought the only Pyncheons left were Hepzibah and Judge Pyncheon. Hepzibah remarks mysteriously: "But, in old houses like this, you know, dead people are very apt to come back again!" . Hepzibah says that Phoebe can stay as long as she likes. Phoebe starts taking over the duties of the household. She quickly washes up and puts the kitchen in order. When the shop doorbell rings, Hepzibah starts reluctantly heading out to her customer. Phoebe offers, "Do not trouble yourself, dear Cousin! I am shopkeeper to-day" . Hepzibah stands by to watch Phoebe bargain with her customer. She is impressed. She thinks to herself that Phoebe is very nice, so it's a shame that she's not a lady. But the narrator believes that Phoebe shows all of the friendliness, tastefulness, and prettiness that a lady could possibly want. Phoebe quickly organizes the shop and arranges for new stock. Ned Higgins comes by and eats three more pieces of gingerbread. By the end of the day, there is "an enormous heap of copper!" - in other words, Phoebe has made a lot of money. Uncle Venner compliments Phoebe's skills. He agrees with Hepzibah that there has never been a Pyncheon like Phoebe. He thinks Phoebe is like one of God's angels. Throughout the day, Hepzibah tells Phoebe about the Pyncheon family: their claim to the land in Maine and the mysterious death of Colonel Pyncheon. She also mentions Mr. Holgrave, the lodger. Hepzibah doesn't know what to make of Mr. Holgrave. He seems like a very nice young man, but he's got a bunch of free-thinking friends who seem very odd. Phoebe asks why Hepzibah lets Mr. Holgrave stay if he's such a troublemaker. Hepzibah hedges; she says Mr. Holgrave is "a quiet kind of person" , and that he is good company for her. Phoebe thinks Mr. Holgrave sounds like "a lawless person" . Hepzibah concludes: "Oh I suppose he has a law of his own!" .

