Only an Incident | Page 3

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 Sophia only equalled by her intense admiration
of her.
So what was there for Phebe to do? She was fond of music, and
whistled like a bird, but she had no piano and did not know one note
from another; and she did not care for books, which was fortunate, as
their wee library, all told, did not count a hundred volumes, most of
which, too, were Miss Lydia's, and were as weak and wishy-washy as
that poor little woman herself. And she did not care for sewing, though
she made nearly all her own clothes, besides attending at any number of
impromptu Dorcas meetings, where the needy were the unskilled rich
instead of the helpless poor, so that of course her labor did not count at
all as a virtue, since it was not doing good, but only obliging a friend.
And she did not care for parties, though she generally went and was
always asked, being such a help as regarded wall-flowers, while none
of the young girls 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.