Old Marlowe, so marred and imperfect in his physical powers, had submitted to her shrewd, ignorant authority, and earned his living and hers by working on his little farm and going out occasionally as a carpenter.
But when she was gone, and his little girl's eyes only were watching him at his work, and the child's soul delighted in all the beautiful forms his busy hands could fashion, he gave up his out-door toil, and, with all the pent-up ardor of the lost years, he threw himself absorbingly into the pleasant occupation of the present.

Though he mourned faithfully for his wife, the woman who had given to him Phebe, he felt happier and freer without her.
Phebe's girlhood also had been both free and happy.

All the seasons had been sweet to her: dear to her was "the summer, clothing the general earth with greenness," and the winter, when "the redbreast sits and sings be-twixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch of the mossy apple-tree." She had listened to "the eave-drops falling in the trances of the blast," and seen them "hang in silent icicles, quietly shining to the quiet moon." There had been no change in nature unnoticed or unbeloved by her.

The unbroken silence reigning around her, heightened by the mute speech between herself and her father, which needed eyes only, not lips, had grown so familiar as to be almost dear to her, in spite of her strong delight in fellowship with others.

The artistic temperament she had inherited from her father, which very early took vivid pleasure in expressing itself in color as well as in form, had furnished her with an occupation of which she could never tire.