Read it through once

The sales were beyond the wildest dreams of the author and publisher, for it was well reviewed in all the literary papers and discussed in all the literary circles. “Where is _Our Village_?” was the question folk were asking each other, and when the secret leaked out, there was a constant stream of traffic from here, there and everywhere to the quiet village of Three Mile Cross, whose inhabitants were the last of all to discover that they had been “put into a book.” What a theme for the cobbler over the way! How he must have neglected his work to watch the congratulating visitors who thronged the cottage opposite, all asking the beaming and delighted author “How she thought of it?” and “Why she did it?” And when, at length, a copy of the book itself found its way to the parlour of the _George and Dragon_ and the cobbler saw himself as “the shoemaker opposite,” we can almost fancy we catch the gratified light in his eye and hear his astonished—“Well! I’ll be jiggered!”