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. Afte