But, as the little personage could not be induced to approach near
enough to explain himself, Phoebe concluded that he had been
frightened, on some of his visits to the shop, by her cousin Hepzibah;
for the good lady's manifestations, in truth, ran about an equal chance
of scaring children out of their wits, or compelling them to unseemly
laughter. Still, she felt the more, for this incident, how
unaccountably silent and impenetrable the house had become. As her
next resort, Phoebe made her way into the garden, where on so warm and
bright a day as the present, she had little doubt of finding Clifford,
and perhaps Hepzibah also, idling away the noontide in the shadow of
the arbor. Immediately on her entering the garden gate, the family of
hens half ran, half flew to meet her; while a strange grimalkin, which
was prowling under the parlor window, took to his heels, clambered
hastily over the fence, and vanished. The arbor was vacant, and its
floor, table, and circular bench were still damp, and bestrewn with
twigs and the disarray of the past storm. The growth of the garden
seemed to have got quite out of bounds; the weeds had taken advantage
of Phoebe's absence, and the long-continued rain, to run rampant over
the flowers and kitchen-vegetables. Maule's well had overflowed its
stone border, and made a pool of formidable breadth in that corner of
the garden.
The impression of the whole scene was that of a spot where no human
foot had left its print for many preceding days,--probably not since
Phoebe's departure,--for she saw a side-comb of her own under the table
of the arbor, where it must have fallen on the last afternoon when she
and Clifford sat there.
The girl knew that her two relatives were capable of far greater
oddities than that of shutting themselves up in their old house, as
they appeared now to have done. Nevertheless, with indistinct
misgivings of something amiss, and apprehensions to which she could not
give shape, she approached the door that formed the customary
communication between the house and garden. It was secured within,
like the two which she had already tried. She knocked, however; and
immediately, as if the application had been expected, the door was
drawn open, by a considerable exertion of some unseen person's
strength, not wide, but far enough to afford her a sidelong entrance.
As Hepzibah, in order not to expose herself to inspection from without,
invariably opened a door in this manner, Phoebe necessarily concluded
that it was her cousin who now admitted her.
Without hesitation, therefore, she stepped across the threshold, and
had no sooner entered than the door closed behind her.