But I'll be back here at dinner-time; for my pig likes a dinner as well as a breakfast. No meal-time, and no sort of victuals ever seems to come amiss to my pig.
Good-morning to you!
And, Mr. Holgrave, if I were a young man like you I'd get one of Alice's Posies, and keep it in water till Phoebe comes back."
"I have heard," said the daguerreotypist, as he drew in his head, "that the water of Maule's well suits those flowers best." Here the conversation ceased, and Uncle Venner went on his way. For half an hour longer nothing disturbed the repose of the seven gables; nor was there any visitor, except a carrier boy, who, as he passed the front doorstep, threw down one of his newspapers; for Hepzibah of late had regularly taken it in.
After a while there came a fat woman, making prodigious speed, and stumbling as she ran up the steps of the shop door.
Her face glowed with fire-heat, and it being a pretty warm morning she bubbled and hissed, as it were, as if all afry with chimney warmth and summer warmth, and the warmth of her own corpulent velocity.
She tried the shop door—it was fast. She tried it again, with so angry a jar that the bell tinkled angrily back at her.
"The deuce take Old Maid Pyncheon!" muttered the irascible housewife.
"Think of her pretending to set up a cent-shop, and then lying abed till noon! These are what she calls gentlefolk's airs, I suppose!
But I'll either start her ladyship, or break the door down!"
She shook it accordingly, and the bell, having a spiteful little temper of its own, rang obstreperously, making its remonstrances heard—not indeed by the ears for which they were intended—but by a good lady on the opposite side of the street.
She opened her window, and addressed the impatient applicant.
"You'll find nobody there, Mrs. Gubbins."
"But I must and will find somebody here!" cried Mrs. Gubbins, inflicting another outrage on the bell.
"I want a half-pound of pork, to fry some first-rate flounders, for Mr. Gubbins' breakfast; and, lady or not, Old Maid Pyncheon shall get up and serve me with it!"
"But do hear reason, Mrs. Gubbins!" responded the lady opposite.
"She and her brother too, have both gone to their cousin, Judge Pyncheon's, at his country seat.
There's not a soul in the house but that young daguerreotype man, that sleeps in the north gable.
I saw old Hepzibah and Clifford go away yesterday, and a queer couple of ducks they were, paddling through the mud puddles! They're gone, I'll assure you."
"And how do you know they're gone to the judge's?" asked Mrs. Gubbins.
"He's a rich man; and there's been a quarrel between him and Hepzibah this many a day, because he won't give her a living.
That's the main reason of her setting up a cent-shop."
"I know that well enough," said the neighbor.
"But they're gone—that's one thing certain.
And who but a blood relation, that couldn't help himself, I ask you, would take in that awful-tempered old maid, and that dreadful Clifford?
That's it, you may be sure."
Mrs. Gubbins took her departure, still brimming over with hot wrath against the absent Hepzibah.
For another half hour, or perhaps considerably more, there was almost as much quiet on the outside of the house as within.
The elm, however, made a pleasant, cheerful, sunny sigh, responsive to the breeze that was elsewhere imperceptible; a swarm of insects buzzed merrily under its drooping shadow and became specks of light, whenever they darted into the sunshine; a locust sang once or twice in some inscrutable seclusion of the tree; and a solitary little bird, with plumage of pale gold, came and hovered about Alice's Posies.
At last our small acquaintance, Ned Higgins, trudged up the street, on his way to school; and happening, for the first time in a fortnight, to be the possessor of a cent, he could by no means get past the shop door of the seven gables.
But it would not open.
Again and again, however, and half a dozen other agains, with the inexorable pertinacity of a child intent upon some object important to itself, did he renew his efforts for admittance.
He had doubtless set his heart upon an elephant; or possibly, with Hamlet, he meant to eat a crocodile.
In response to his more violent attacks, the bell gave now and then a moderate tinkle, but could not be stirred into clamour by any exertion of the little fellow's childish and tiptoe strength.
Holding by the door-handle, he peeped through a crevice of the curtain, and saw that the inner door communicating with the passage towards the parlour, was closed.
"Miss Pyncheon!" screamed the child, rapping on the window-pane,
"I want an elephant!"
There being no answer to several repetitions of the summons, Ned began to grow impatient; and his little pot of passion quickly boiling over, he picked up a stone, with a naughty purpose to fling it through the window; at the same time blubbering and sputtering with wrath. A man—one of two who happened to be passing by—caught the urchin's arm.
"What's the trouble, old gentleman?" he asked.
"I want old Hepzibah, or Phoebe, or any of them!" answered Ned, sobbing.
"They won't open the door; and I can't get my elephant."
"Go to school, you little scamp!" said the man.
"There's another cent-shop round the corner.
'Tis very strange, Dixey," added he to his companion, "what's become of all these Pyncheons!
Smith, the livery-stable keeper, tells me Judge Pyncheon put his horse up yesterday, to stand till after dinner, and has not taken him away yet.
And one of the judge's hired men has been in this morning to make inquiry about him.
He's a kind of person, they say, that seldom breaks his habits, or stays out o' nights."
"O, he'll turn up safe enough!" said Dixey.
"And as for old Maid Pyncheon, take my word for it, she has run in debt and gone off from her creditors.
I foretold, you remember, the first morning she set up shop, that her devilish scowl would frighten away customers.