s dreaded her as a rival, it being a well known
fact that Phebe Lane, general favorite though she was, somehow or other
never "took" with the men, or at least not sufficiently to damage any
other enterprising girl's prospects. Why this was so, was hard to say.
Phebe was pretty, and lovable, and sweet tempered. If she was not
sparkling or witty, neither was she sarcastic; and bright enough she
was certainly, though not intellectual, and though she talked little
save with a few. It was strange. True as steel, possessed of that keen
sense of justice and honor so strangely lacking in many women, with a
passionate capability for love and devotion and self-sacrifice beyond
power of fathoming, and above all with a clinging womanly nature that
yearned for affection as a flower longs for light, she was yet the only
girl out of all her set who had never had any especial attention.
Perhaps it was because she was no flirt. Bell Masters said no girl
could get along who did not flirt. Perhaps because in her excessive
truthfulness she was sometimes blunt and almost brusque; it is
dreadfully out of place not to be able to lie a little at times. Even
Mrs. Upjohn, the female lay-head of the Presbyterians, who was a
walking Decalogue, her every sentence being a law beginning with Thou
shalt not, admitted practically, if not theoretically, that without
risk of damnation it was possible to swerve occasionally from a too
rigid Yea and Nay. Perhaps,--ah, well, there is no use in exhausting
the perhapses. The fact remained. Of girl-friends she had plenty, and
of men-friends she had plenty; but of lovers she had none.

And this was why when the Rev. Mr. Denham Halloway was called to the
vacant parish of St. Joseph's and fell down in its maidenly midst like a
meteor from an unexplored heaven,--a young, handsome divine, in every way
marriageable, though still unmarried, and in every way attractive, though
still to the best of hope and belief unattracted,--this was why no girl
of them all thought her own chances lessened in the least when he and
Phebe became such friends. No one gossiped. No one ah-ah'd, or oh-oh'd.
No one thought twice about it. What difference could it make? If it had
been anybody else now! But it was only Phebe Lane.

CHAPTER II.

PHEBE.

"Miss Phebe!"

"Oh, Mr. Halloway!"

"Hush. Don't let them know I'm here. I couldn't help peeping in as I went
by. You look done up."

"I am."

"What's going on?"

"Come in