Only an Incident

by Grace Denio Litchfield

"Then perhaps," said Denham, pleasantly, "we may hope that you will in time light upon the very kindliest and rightest way combined of judging not only abstract subjects, but also the not altogether unworthy inhabitants of even this little place of Joppa."

"Oh, Joppa!" cried Gerald, all the impatience instantly coming back to her face and voice. As instantly too she frowned in self-conviction, and turned almost contritely to Denham. "You see, Mr. Halloway, I shall have to bring my own character first to that future Day of Judgment, and to be very careful that I do not err on your side,—in being too merciful."

CHAPTER XII.

WHY DO SUMMER ROSES FADE?

A few more days slipped by, easily and swiftly, as all days did in Joppa. The famous party was discussed and re-discussed down to its minutest details. Mrs. Hardcastle recovered from her subsequent attack of neuralgia. Mr. Hardcastle, who went from house to house, gathering compliments as an assessor levies taxes, completed the round of the village and began again. Mrs. Upjohn asked for and obtained the recipe of a certain dish, the like of which had never before been seen in Joppa, and the Joppites commended her boldness in asking and condemned Mrs. Hardcastle's weakness in giving. The report that Mr. Upjohn had apostatized from the Presbyterian Church, disapproving of its tenets as regarded waltzing, was duly started, denied, violently adopted, and as violently exploded. The statements that Jake Dexter was engaged to Nellie Atterbury, that Bell Masters had offered herself to Mr. Halloway and been declined with thanks, and that Gerald's hat had been imported from Paris two days before, were also duly aired and evaporated. It had, moreover, by this time become a town fact, that it was Bell Masters and not Janet Mudge whom Halloway had rowed to the party, and that he had walked home with Mrs. Lane. Miss Brooks overheard him taking leave of her at her door, and fancied—but was not sure—that she told him to change his boots lest his feet should be damp. Everybody had also found out beyond discussion or doubt that De Forest was Gerald's escort home on that occasion, but that the engagement between them was broken off. It was definitely known that he had said he was a blighted being, and should shortly take a return ticket to New York. Everybody said it was a shame, when they were so manifestly cut out for each other. In fact, every thing had been found out about every thing. The evening had been talked threadbare, and, alas, there was nothing else to talk about. Phebe's reappearance downstairs, unscarred and bonnie as ever, was become an old story long since, and Dr. Dennis' treatment of the case was now admitted to have been the very best possible next to what Dr. Harrison's treatment would have been, though by all means, it was decided, Dr. Dennis and not Dr. Harrison should have been called in when Mr. Brown, the grocer, fell ill of a fever. Poor Joppa was indeed fairly talked out. It had to settle down upon the fever and Mr. Brown for lack of any thing else. It was really almost a godsend when Mrs. Brown took the fever too, for it gave Joppa just twice as much to talk about, and everybody said it was somebody's duty to see that the poor souls had right advice in the matter. Jabez Brown, Jr., carried on the business in his father's stead, and measured out his sugars and teas at so much advice the pound, and did a thriving business, but the poor old father died all the same. He was a respectable, honest man, and all his customers attended his funeral in the most neighborly way in the world, with a grim look upon their sympathetic countenances of "I told you so. It should have been Dr. Dennis."

Yes, to all but Phebe, her illness and long imprisonment and her return to matter-of-fact life downstairs, was a tame-enough story now. But to her it was as the opening chapter of a new history. Life seemed changed and strange to her when she stepped back into it, and took up again the duties and labors that she had laid by only so lately. Had she dreamed herself into another world, or why was it so hard to put herself back into the place she had stepped out of? Everybody about her was the same; nothing had really changed in any way, and certainly she had not. Neither had Gerald. Neither had Mr. Halloway. What had she expected? What was it she had vaguely looked forward to? What was it that was so different?

"Pray, what are you thinking of?" Denham asked suddenly one day, turning to her with his bright, sweet smile. "You have been quiet for very long."

"So have you been quiet," returned Phebe. "I do not think I have been any less talkative than you."

"Perhaps not," said Denham. "We are leaving Soeur Angélique and Miss Vernor to have a regular tête-à-tête of it, are we not? But you evade my question in a very unbecoming way, Miss Phebe. Tell me, what were you thinking of?"

"I don't quite know," answered Phebe, slowly. "But I think I was wishing for impossibilities,—for things that can't possibly happen, just because it would be so nice if they could."