Hepzibah brought out some old silver spoons with the family crest upon

them, and a china tea-set painted over with grotesque figures of man,

bird, and beast, in as grotesque a landscape. These pictured people

were odd humorists, in a world of their own,--a world of vivid

brilliancy, so far as color went, and still unfaded, although the

teapot and small cups were as ancient as the custom itself of

tea-drinking.

"Your great-great-great-great-grandmother had these cups, when she was

married," said Hepzibah to Phoebe. "She was a Davenport, of a good

family. They were almost the first teacups ever seen in the colony;

and if one of them were to be broken, my heart would break with it.

But it is nonsense to speak so about a brittle teacup, when I remember

what my heart has gone through without breaking."

The cups--not having been used, perhaps, since Hepzibah's youth--had

contracted no small burden of dust, which Phoebe washed away with so

much care and delicacy as to satisfy even the proprietor of this

invaluable china.

"What a nice little housewife you are!" exclaimed the latter, smiling,

and at the same time frowning so prodigiously that the smile was

sunshine under a thunder-cloud. "Do you do other things as well? Are

you as good at your book as you are at washing teacups?"

"Not quite, I am afraid," said Phoebe, laughing at the form of

Hepzibah's question. "But I was schoolmistress for the little children

in our district last summer, and might have been so still."

"Ah! 'tis all very well!" observed the maiden lady, drawing herself up.

"But these things must have come to you with your mother's blood. I

never knew a Pyncheon that had any turn for them."

It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally

quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their

available gifts; as was Hepzibah of this native inapplicability, so to

speak, of the Pyncheons to any useful purpose. She regarded it as an

hereditary trait; and so, perhaps, it was, but unfortunately a morbid

one, such as is often generated in families that remain long above the

surface of society.

Before they left the breakfast-table, the shop-bell rang sharply, and

Hepzibah set down the remnant of her final cup of tea, with a look of

sallow despair that was truly piteous to behold. In cases of

distasteful occupation, the second day is generally worse than the

first. We return to the rack with all the soreness of the preceding

torture in our limbs. At all events, Hepzibah had fully satisfied

herself of the impossibility of ever becoming wonted to this peevishly

obstreperous little bell. Ring as often as it might, the sound always

smote upon her nervous system rudely and suddenly. And especially now,

while, with her crested teaspoons and antique china, she was flattering

herself with ideas of gentility, she felt an unspeakable disinclination

to confront a customer.




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