, 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.

X The Pyncheon Garden

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 ve