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 dressmaker? 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 postmistress 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.
II
As summer wore on into autumn the dry weather turned to a veritable drought, and all the streams ran lower and lower. Word came early that the mills at Harner’s Bend, over in the next valley, had been compelled to shut down for lack of logs. But Brine’s Rip exulted unkindly. The Ottanoonsis, fed by a group of cold spring lakes, maintained a steady flow; there were plenty of logs, and the mills had every prospect of working full time all through the autumn. Presently they began to gather in big orders which would have gone otherwise to Harner’s Bend. Brine’s Rip not only exulted, but took into itself merit. It felt that it must, on general principles, have deserved well of Providence, for Providence so obviously to take sides with it.
As August drew to a dusty, choking end, Mary Farrell began to collect her accounts. Her tact and sympathy made this easy for her, and women paid up civilly enough who had never been known to do such a thing before, unless at the point of a summons. Mary said she was going to the States, perhaps as far as New York itself, to renew her stock and study up the latest fashions.
Every one was much interested. Woolly Billy’s eyes brimmed over at the prospect of her absence, but he was consoled by the promise of her speedy return with an air-gun and also a toy steam-engine that would really go. As for Jim, his feathery black tail drooped in premonition of a loss, but he could not gather exactly what was afoot. He was further troubled by an unusual depression on the part of Tug Blackstock. The Deputy Sheriff seemed to have lost his zest in tracking down evil-doers.