As to Phoebe's not being a lady, or whether she were a lady or no, it
was a point, perhaps, difficult to decide, but which could hardly have
come up for judgment at all in any fair and healthy mind. Out of New
England, it would be impossible to meet with a person combining so many
ladylike attributes with so many others that form no necessary (if
compatible) part of the character. She shocked no canon of taste; she
was admirably in keeping with herself, and never jarred against
surrounding circumstances. Her figure, to be sure,--so small as to be
almost childlike, and so elastic that motion seemed as easy or easier
to it than rest, would hardly have suited one's idea of a countess.
Neither did her face--with the brown ringlets on either side, and the
slightly piquant nose, and the wholesome bloom, and the clear shade of
tan, and the half dozen freckles, friendly remembrances of the April
sun and breeze--precisely give us a right to call her beautiful. But
there was both lustre and depth in her eyes. She was very pretty; as
graceful as a bird, and graceful much in the same way; as pleasant
about the house as a gleam of sunshine falling on the floor through a
shadow of twinkling leaves, or as a ray of firelight that dances on the
wall while evening is drawing nigh. Instead of discussing her claim
to rank among ladies, it would be preferable to regard Phoebe as the
example of feminine grace and availability combined, in a state of
society, if there were any such, where ladies did not exist. There it
should be woman's office to move in the midst of practical affairs, and
to gild them all, the very homeliest,--were it even the scouring of
pots and kettles,--with an atmosphere of loveliness and joy.
Such was the sphere of Phoebe. To find the born and educated lady, on
the other hand, we need look no farther than Hepzibah, our forlorn old
maid, in her rustling and rusty silks, with her deeply cherished and
ridiculous consciousness of long descent, her shadowy claims to
princely territory, and, in the way of accomplishment, her
recollections, it may be, of having formerly thrummed on a harpsichord,
and walked a minuet, and worked an antique tapestry-stitch on her
sampler. It was a fair parallel between new Plebeianism and old
Gentility.
It really seemed as if the battered visage of the House of the Seven
Gables, black and heavy-browed as it still certainly looked, must have
shown a kind of cheerfulness glimmering through its dusky windows as
Phoebe passed to and fro in the interior. Otherwise, it is impossible
to explain how the people of the neighborhood so soon became aware of
the girl's presence. There was a great run of custom, setting steadily
in, from about ten o' clock until towards noon,--relaxing, somewhat, at
dinner-time, but recommencing in the afternoon, and, finally, dying
away a half an hour or so before the long day's sunset. One of the
stanchest patrons was little Ned Higgins, the devourer of Jim Crow and
the elephant, who to-day signalized his omnivorous prowess by
swallowing two dromedaries and a locomotive. Phoebe laughed, as she
summed up her aggregate of sales upon the slate; while Hepzibah, first
drawing on a pair of silk gloves, reckoned over the sordid accumulation
of copper coin, not without silver intermixed, that had jingled into
the till.