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!

 The Pyncheon-Garden  One of the few sources of amusement for Clifford is the garden, which, under Phoebe and Holgrave's tender care, has slowly been coming back to life. Phoebe often takes Clifford out into the garden, where she reads aloud to him. These little excursions with Phoebe always please Clifford, particularly when she reads poetry. In a magnanimous gesture, he decrees that the old chickens be allowed to roam free throughout the garden. They often can be found clustered close to Maule's Well. Earlier in the summer, Holgrave discovered some bean-vine seeds hidden away in a chest of drawers in a garret over one of the seven gables, stored away by a long-deceased Pyncheon ancestor. To see how long such seeds last, Clifford planted them, and now they have shot up as healthy bean vines laden with bright red blossoms, always swarmed by hummingbirds, to Clifford's great delight. The sight of Clifford admiring the hummingbirds and puttering about his garden with an innocence that is almost childlike warms Hepzibah's heart. At the same time, however, the sight of such happiness, and the thought that both she and Clifford have seen so many years wasted, give Hepzibah a slight twinge of sadness. Hepzibah has begun arranging Sunday-afternoon lunches with Phoebe, Clifford, Holgrave, and Uncle Venner. Clifford, whose social interactions are typically muted, is surprisingly animated at these lunches. He enjoys speaking with Uncle Venner, whose greatly advanced age makes Clifford feel almost young. Holgrave also makes friendly overtures toward Clifford, but the narrator notes the "questionable" expression that occasionally appears in the artist's eye. On one such occasion, Uncle Venner mentions that he dreams of eventually retiring to the workhouse, which he refers to as the "farm," and Clifford insinuates that he has bigger, more ambitious plans for Uncle Venner. Uncle Venner, however, politely refuses to be party to any such strategies, saying that he feels no burning desire to heap up property, since it seems to take away from what God has provided him with. As the sun begins to set, Clifford's high spirits decline. He mutters to himself, "I want my happiness. Many, many years have I waited for it. It is late. The narrator expresses pity for Clifford, for his past troubles and his half-imbecility, and says that Fate holds no happiness for Clifford unless he can find it in his time with Phoebe and luncheons like the one he has just consumed. The narrator advises Clifford to accept this as happiness: "Murmur not--question not--but make the most of it.

