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