r 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