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!"