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In Exile and Other Stories by Mary Hallock Foote
page 52 of 173 (30%)
and squeezing the fleece, with the water swirling round her. Her stout arms
ached, and her ears were stunned with the incessant bleatings; she counted
with dismay the sheep still waiting in the pen. "Oh, Jimmy! Do stop crying,
or else go to the house!"

"He'd better go after Reuby," said Sheppard Barton, who was now Dorothy's
sole dependence.

"Oh yes, do, Jimmy, that's a good boy. Tell him to let the yearling go and
come back quick."

The water had run low that morning in Evesham's pond. He shut down the
mill, and strode up the hills, across lots, to raise the gate of the lower
Barton pond, which had been heading up for his use. He passed the cornfield
where, a month before, he had seen pretty Dorothy Barton dropping corn with
her brothers. It made him ache to think of Dorothy with her feeble mother,
the boys as wild as preachers' sons proverbially are, and the old farm
running down on her hands; the fences all needed mending, and there went
Reuben Barton, now, careering over the fields in chase of a stray yearling.
His mother's house was big, and lonely, and empty; and he flushed as he
thought of the "one ewe-lamb" he coveted out of Friend Barton's rugged
pastures.

As Evesham raised the gate, and leaned to watch the water swirl and gurgle
through the "trunk," sucking the long weeds with it, and thickening with
its tumult the clear current of the stream, the sound of voices and the
bleating of sheep came up from below. He had not the farming instincts in
his blood; the distant bleating, the hot June sunshine and cloudless sky
did not suggest to him sheep-washing; but now came a boy's voice shouting
and a cry of distress, and he remembered with a thrill that Friend Barton
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