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.

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.