s of the House of
the Seven Gables seemed to have vanished since her appearance there;
the gnawing tooth of the dry-rot was stayed among the old timbers of
its skeleton frame; the dust had ceased to settle down so densely, from
the antique ceilings, upon the floors and furniture of the rooms
below,--or, at any rate, there was a little housewife, as light-footed
as the breeze that sweeps a garden walk, gliding hither and thither to
brush it all away. The shadows of gloomy events that haunted the else
lonely and desolate apartments; the heavy, breathless scent which death
had left in more than one of the bedchambers, ever since his visits of
long ago,--these were less powerful than the purifying influence
scattered throughout the atmosphere of the household by the presence of
one youthful, fresh, and thoroughly wholesome heart. There was no
morbidness in Phoebe; if there had been, the old Pyncheon House was the
very locality to ripen it into incurable disease. But now her spirit
resembled, in its potency, a minute quantity of ottar of rose in one of
Hepzibah's huge, iron-bound trunks, diffusing its fragrance through the
various articles of linen and wrought-lace, kerchiefs, caps, stockings,
folded dresses, gloves, and whatever else was treasured there. As
every article in the great trunk was the sweeter for the rose-scent, so
did all the thoughts and emotions of Hepzibah and Clifford, sombre as
they might seem, acquire a subtle attribute of happiness from Phoebe's
intermixture with them. Her activity of body, intellect, and heart
impelled her continually to perform the ordinary little toils that
offered themselves around her, and to think the thought proper for the
moment, and to sympathize,--now with the twittering gayety of the
robins in the pear-tree, and now to such a depth as she could with
Hepzibah's dark anxiety, or the vague moan of her brother. This facile
adaptation was at once the symptom of perfect health and its best
preservative.

A nature like Phoebe's has invariably its due influence, but is seldom
regarded with due honor. Its spiritual force, however, may be
partially estimated by the fact of her having found a place for
herself, amid circumstances so stern as those which surrounded the
mistress of the house; and also by the effect which she produced on a
character of so much more mass than her own. For the gaunt, bony
frame and limbs of Hepzibah, as compared with the tiny lightsomeness of
Phoeb