Lane? Of course it would not have mattered much had it been suspected,
since it was only Phebe Lane after all who entertained it,--little Phebe
Lane, whose ancestors, though good and well-born enough, did not hail
from Morocco, and who lived, not in the West End proper, but only on the
borders of it, in a street where one could not get so much as a side peep
at the lake. It was not a pretty house either where she lived. It was
square and clumsy and without any originality, and, moreover, faced plump
on the street, so that one could look right into its parlor and
sitting-room windows as one strolled along the wooden sidewalks. And
people were in the habit of looking in that way a good deal. Nothing was
ever going on in there that could not bear this sudden outside
inspection, and it was the shortest way to call Phebe when she was wanted
for any thing of a sudden,--to bear a fourth hand at whist, or to stone
raisins for Mrs. Adams the day before her luncheon, or to run on an
errand down town for some lazy body who preferred other people's legs to
her own for locomotion, or to relieve some wearied host in the
entertainment of his dull guest, or to help in some way or other, here,
there, and yonder. She was just the one to be called upon, of course, for
she was just the one who was always on hand, and always ready to go. She
never had any thing to keep her at home. Her father had long been dead,
and she lived alone with her step-mother and step-aunt in the house which
was left her by her mother, but in which the present Mrs. Lane still
ruled absolute, as she did when she first came into it in Phebe's
childish days. Mrs. Lane was strong and energetic and commonplace; and
she ran the little house from garret to cellar with a thoroughness that
left Phebe no part whatever to take in it, while the remainder of her
energy she devoted to nursing her invalid sister, Miss Lydia, a little
weak, complaining creature, who had had not only every ill that flesh is
heir to, but a great many ills besides that she was firmly persuaded no
other flesh had ever inherited, and who stood in an awe of her sister