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Updated: September 15, 2025
He stared at Hepzibah a moment, as an elder customer than himself would have been likely enough to do, not knowing what to make of the tragic attitude and queer scowl wherewith she regarded him. "Well, child," said she, taking heart at sight of a personage so little formidable, "well, my child, what did you wish for?"
"Well, here it is for you," said Hepzibah, reaching it down; but recognizing that this pertinacious customer would not quit her on any other terms, so long as she had a gingerbread figure in her shop, she partly drew back her extended hand, "Where is the cent?" The little boy had the cent ready, but, like a true-born Yankee, would have preferred the better bargain to the worse.
Poor Hepzibah, when she heard the kindly tone of his voice, began to sob. "Ah, Mr. Holgrave," she cried, "I never can go through with it! Never, never, never! I wish I were dead in the old family tomb with all my forefathers yes, and with my brother, who had far better find me there than here! I am too old, too feeble, and too hopeless!
In the same way he has made his description of Hepzibah Pyncheon's seven-gabled mansion conform so nearly to several old dwellings formerly or still extant in Salem, that strenuous efforts have been made to fix upon some one of them as the veritable edifice of the romance.
As they passed the kitchen door near which the grim Hepzibah stood, Miss Dorothy drew her skirts aside and fled down the garden walk, giving a pretended scared look over her shoulder as she caught Marian's hand. "Don't let her get me, will you?" she said.
If old Maule's ghost, or a descendant of his, could see me behind the counter to-day, he would call it the fulfilment of his worst wishes. But I thank you for your kindness, Mr. Holgrave, and will do my utmost to be a good shopkeeper." On Holgrave asking for half a dozen biscuits, Hepzibah put them into his hand, but rejected the compensation.
But Hepzibah could not rid herself of the sense of something unprecedented at that instant passing and soon to be accomplished. Her nerves were in a shake. Instinctively she paused before the arched window, and looked out upon the street, in order to seize its permanent objects with her mental grasp, and thus to steady herself from the reel and vibration which affected her more immediate sphere.
"You are thinking of that dismal old house, and of Cousin Jaffrey" here came the quake through him, "and of Cousin Jaffrey sitting there, all by himself! Take my advice, follow my example, and let such things slip aside. Here we are, in the world, Hepzibah! in the midst of life! in the throng of our fellow beings! Let you and I be happy!
Remember it, however; and when the truth becomes clear to you, then think of this moonlight scene!" "It is entirely moonlight now, except only a little flush of faint crimson, upward from the west, between those buildings," remarked Phoebe. "I must go in. Cousin Hepzibah is not quick at figures, and will give herself a headache over the day's accounts, unless I help her."
The Reverend Ozias Mounce, Tony's governor and bear-leader, was just putting a hand to the third clause of the fourth part of a sermon on Free-Will and Predestination as the Hepzibah B.'s anchor rattled overboard.
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