Explore "The Fortunes of Richard Mahony" by Henry Handel Richardson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The practice bore out its reputation. The huckster, the publican and the ostler were in the minority here; Mahony's visiting-list was studded with good names. This change for the better, together with the pride he took in his pretty house and garden, sent his spirits up sky-high. And, as was natural, he read his own satisfaction into others. "If I'm not much mistaken, Mary, people here are well pleased to have a medical man of a reasonable age in their midst again." It fell to Mary to keep him gently damped; to prevent him skipping off the earth altogether, in his new-found lightness of heart.
At first, though, even she had to admit there was nothing to complain of.