keep company with Phoebe, so far as their paths lay together; nor, in
spite of his patched coat and rusty beaver, and the curious fashion of
his tow-cloth trousers, could she find it in her heart to outwalk him.

"We shall miss you, next Sabbath afternoon," observed the street
philosopher. "It is unaccountable how little while it takes some folks
to grow just as natural to a man as his own breath; and, begging your
pardon, Miss Phoebe (though there can be no offence in an old man's
saying it), that's just what you've grown to me! My years have been a
great many, and your life is but just beginning; and yet, you are
somehow as familiar to me as if I had found you at my mother's door,
and you had blossomed, like a running vine, all along my pathway since.
Come back soon, or I shall be gone to my farm; for I begin to find
these wood-sawing jobs a little too tough for my back-ache."

"Very soon, Uncle Venner," replied Phoebe.

"And let it be all the sooner, Phoebe, for the sake of those poor souls
yonder," continued her companion. "They can never do without you,
now,--never, Phoebe; never--no more than if one of God's angels had
been living with them, and making their dismal house pleasant and
comfortable! Don't it seem to you they'd be in a sad case, if, some
pleasant summer morning like this, the angel should spread his wings,
and fly to the place he came from? Well, just so they feel, now that
you're going home by the railroad! They can't bear it, Miss Phoebe; so
be sure to come back!"

"I am no angel, Uncle Venner," said Phoebe, smiling, as she offered him
her hand at the street-corner. "But, I suppose, people never feel so
much like angels as when they are doing what little good they may. So
I shall certainly come back!"

Thus parted the old man and the rosy girl; and Phoebe took the wings of
the morning, and was soon flitting almost as rapidly away as if endowed
with the aerial locomotion of the angels to whom Uncle Venner had so
graciously compared her.

XV The Scowl and Smile

SEVERAL days passed over the Seven Gables, heavily and drearily enough.
In fact (not to attribute the whole gloom of sky and earth to the one
inauspicious circumstance of Phoebe's departure), an easterly storm had
set in, and indefatigably apply itself to the task of making the black
roof and walls of the old house look more cheerless than ever before.
Yet was the outside not half so cheerless as t