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 lashes¹ in their direction.  
Tug² Blackstock, the Deputy-Sheriff, to be sure, did not capitulate quite so promptly³ as the rest. Mary had to flash her dark blue eyes upon him at least twice, dropping them again with shy admiration⁴. 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 hostility⁶ 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 tact⁵ made even the most irreconcilable⁷ of her own sex sheath their claws in dealing⁸ with her. She had come from Harner's Bend. The Mills at Harner's Bend were anathema⁹ to Brine's Rip Mills. A keen trade rivalry¹⁰ had grown, fed by a series of petty but exasperating¹¹ 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 ............