I
When pretty Mary Farrell came to Brine's Rip and set up a modest
dressmaker's shop quite close to the Mills (she said she loved the
sound of the saws), all the unattached males of the village, to say
nothing of too many of the attached ones, fell instant victims to her
charms. They were her slaves from the first lifting of her long lashes
in their direction.
Tug Blackstock, the Deputy-Sheriff, to be sure, did not capitulate
quite so promptly as the rest. Mary had to flash her dark blue eyes
upon him at least twice, dropping them again with shy admiration. Then
he was at her feet--which was a pleasant place to be, seeing that those
same small feet were shod with a neatness which was a perpetual
reproach to the untidy sawdust strewn roadways of Brine's Rip.
Even Big Andy, the boyish young giant from the Oromocto, wavered for a
few hours in his allegiance to the postmistress. But Mary was much too
tactful to draw upon her pretty shoulders the hostility of such a power
as the postmistress, and Big Andy's enthusiasm was cold-douched in its
first glow.
As for the womenfolk of Brine's Rip, it was not to be expected that
they would agree any too cordially with the men on the subject of Mary
Farrell.
But one instance of Mary's tact made even the most irreconcilable of
her own sex sheath their claws in dealing with her. She had come from
Harner's Bend. The Mills at Harner's Bend were anathema to Brine's Rip
Mills. A keen trade rivalry had grown, fed by a series of petty but
exasperating incidents, into a hostility that blazed out on the least
occasion. And pretty Mary had come from Harner's Bend. Brine's Rip
did not find it out till Mary's spell had been cast and secured, of
course. But the fact was a bitter one to swallow. No one else but
Mary Farrell could have made Brine's Rip swallow it.
One day Big Andy, greatly daring, and secure in his renovated
allegiance to the postmistress, ventured to chaff Mary about it. She
turned upon him, half amused and half indignant.
"Well," she demanded, "isn't Harner's Bend a good place to come away
from? Do you think I'd ought to have stopped there? Do I look like
the kind of girl that _wouldn't_ come away from Harner's Bend? And me
a dress-maker? I just couldn't _live_, let alone make a living, among
such a dowdy lot of women-folk as they've got over there. It isn't
dresses _they_ want, but oat-sacks, and you wouldn't know the
difference, either, when they'd got them on."
The implication was obvious; and the women of Brine's Rip began to
allow for possible virtues in Miss Farrell. The post-mistress declared
there was no harm in her, and even admitted that she might almost be
called good-looking "if she hadn't such an _awful_ big mouth."
I have said that all the male folk of Brine's Rip had capitulated
immediately to the summons of Mary Farrell's eyes. But there were two
notable exceptions--Woolly Billy and Jim. Both Woolly Billy's flaxen
mop of curls and the great curly black head of Jim, the dog, had turned
away coldly from Mary's first advances. Woolly Billy preferred men to
women anyhow. And Jim was jealous of Tug Blackstock's devotion to the
petticoated stranger.
But Mary Farrell knew how to manage children and dogs as well as men.
She ignored both Jim and Woolly Billy. She did it quite pointedly, yet
with a gracious politeness that left no room for resentment. Neither
the child nor the dog was accustomed to being ignored. Before long
Mary's amiable indifference began to make them feel as if they were
being left out in the cold. They began to think they were losing
something because she did not notice them. Reluctantly at first, but
by-and-by with eagerness, they courted her attention. At last they
gained it. It was undeniably pleasant. From that moment the child and
the dog were at Mary's well-shod and self-reliant little feet.