She opened wide, serious eyes.  “Oh, no.”  He smiled down at her very kindly, “You shall go right away,” he said, releasing her.  “I will not keep you another instant from dear Mr. Hardcastle and that nice Mrs. Upjohn.  But before you go let me tell you, Miss Phebe, that, if only in view of your latest confession, I do not think you commonplace at all!”

CHAPTER III.

Gerald.

It was another article of the Joppian creed, that there was no such thing possible as a purely Platonic friendship between a young man and a young woman; there must always be “something in it”:  either a mitten for him, or a disappointment for her, or wedding-cake for all—­generally and preferably, of course, the wedding-cake;—­and belonging to such friendship as lawfully as a tail belongs to a comet, was a great, wide-spreading area of gossip.  It was only in the case of Phebe Lane that this universal and common-sense rule had its one particular and unreasonable exception; and it was acting upon a speedily acquired knowledge of this by-law, that Mr. Halloway boldly pursued his plan for metamorphosing his young friend, right under the open eyes and ears of the Joppites.  He lived so near that it was the most natural thing in the world for him to stop for a moment’s chat, as every one else did, either inside or outside of the window as he went by; and as he was always sure of meeting others, call when he would, it certainly never could have been asserted of him that he went there only to see Phebe.  Indeed, he often scarcely spoke with her at all when he so dropped in, and yet out of these frequent and informal meetings an intimacy had sprung up between them such as Phebe at least had never known before.  She submitted herself to him docilely, reading his books patiently even when they bored her unutterably, as not seldom happened, and endeavoring to form her opinion straitly upon his on all intellectual questions, recognizing her own fallibility with a humility that at once touched and charmed him.  Real humility is rare enough the world over, but nowhere is it less conspicuously apparent than among the flourishing virtues of Joppa; and it was not long before this fact was discovered by Denham Halloway, who, with all his gayety and light-heartedness, was a keen and discriminating observer of character.  He was one of those interesting people whom all other people interest; one of those who derive their peculiar charm more from what they find in you than from what they show you of themselves, though one might be ashamed to confess the truth so baldly.  These are the people who, without any especial gift of either mind or person, wheedle your secrets out of you before you know it, possessing all your trust and your liking before they have given any real evidence of deserving your confidence, and yet, somehow or other, though rarely either great or talented, or even heroically good, never for one moment abusing it.  Such characters