med the lower classes, whom heretofore she had looked down upon
with a gentle and pitying complaisance, as herself occupying a sphere
of unquestionable superiority. But, unfortunately, she had likewise to
struggle against a bitter emotion of a directly opposite kind: a
sentiment of virulence, we mean, towards the idle aristocracy to which
it had so recently been her pride to belong. When a lady, in a
delicate and costly summer garb, with a floating veil and gracefully
swaying gown, and, altogether, an ethereal lightness that made you look
at her beautifully slippered feet, to see whether she trod on the dust
or floated in the air,--when such a vision happened to pass through
this retired street, leaving it tenderly and delusively fragrant with
her passage, as if a bouquet of tea-roses had been borne along,--then
again, it is to be feared, old Hepzibah's scowl could no longer
vindicate itself entirely on the plea of near-sightedness.

"For what end," thought she, giving vent to that feeling of hostility
which is the only real abasement of the poor in presence of the
rich,--"for what good end, in the wisdom of Providence, does that woman
live? Must the whole world toil, that the palms of her hands may be
kept white and delicate?"

Then, ashamed and penitent, she hid her face.

"May God forgive me!" said she.

Doubtless, God did forgive her. But, taking the inward and outward
history of the first half-day into consideration, Hepzibah began to
fear that the shop would prove her ruin in a moral and religious point
of view, without contributing very essentially towards even her
temporal welfare.

IV A Day Behind the Counter

TOWARDS noon, Hepzibah saw an elderly gentleman, large and portly, and
of remarkably dignified demeanor, passing slowly along on the opposite
side of the white and dusty street. On coming within the shadow of the
Pyncheon Elm, he stopt, and (taking off his hat, meanwhile, to wipe the
perspiration from his brow) seemed to scrutinize, with especial
interest, the dilapidated and rusty-visaged House of the Seven Gables.
He himself, in a very different style, was as well worth looking at as
the house. No better model need be sought, nor could have been found,
of a very high order of respectability, which, by some indescribable
magic, not merely expressed itself in his looks and gestures, but even
governed the fashion of his garments, and rendered them all proper and
ess