t's good news, and I'm the first to get it from
you."

They shook hands and were cheerful together; the foreign letter was
crammed into Father Daley's pocket, and he reached for his big cane.

"Tell everybody as you go up the street, sir," said Dan. "I've got a
hurricane of things to see to; I must go the other way down to the
storehouses. Tell them to pass the good news about town as fast as
they can; 'twill hearten up the women." All the anxious look had gone
as if by magic from the agent's face.

Two weeks from that time the old mill bell stopped tolling for the
slow hours of idleness and rang out loud and clear for the
housekeepers to get up, and rang for breakfast, and later still for
all the people to go in to work. Some of the old hands were gone for
good and new ones must be broken in in their places, but there were
many familiar faces to pass the counting-room windows into the mill
yard. There were French families which had reappeared with surprising
promptness, Michel and his pretty daughter were there, and a household
of cousins who had come to the next tenement. The agent stood with his
hands in his pockets and nodded soberly to one group after another. It
seemed to him that he had never felt so happy in his life.

"Jolly-looking set this morning," said one of the clerks whose desk
was close beside the window; he was a son of one of the directors, who
had sent him to the agent to learn something about manufacturing.

"They've had a bitter hard summer that you know nothing about," said
the agent slowly.

Just then Mrs. Kilpatrick and old Mary Cassidy came along, and little
Maggie was with them. She had got back her old chance at doffing and
the hard times were over. They all smiled with such blissful
satisfaction that the agent smiled too, and even waved his hand.

Transcriber's Note: This e-book was excerpted from a modern
reprint of works. The table of contents for "Selected Stories and
Sketches" has been editted to identify the source of each story
in the source work.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Country Doctor and Selected Stories
and Sketches, by Sarah Orne Jewett

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A COUNTRY DOCTOR AND ***

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