Poppea of the Post-Office

by Mabel Osgood Wright

"You want me? But how about Miss Elizabeth and Mr. Esterbrook? Are they not going?"

"No, dear; I have struck at last. It is late in the day, I allow, but once before my eyes close I must see through them without benefit of the spectacles of other opinions. Besides, poor Willy is losing his hold upon things. Even Elizabeth has agreed that we must put our affairs at Harley's Mills into the hands of Hugh Oldys, and Mr. Cragin, our lawyer here, has practically all the responsibility at this end. Poppea child, whatever you do or do not do in this world, do not put off living your life to the full every day that it is possible. To-morrow is a good word for hope to know, but remember that it is a bad word for a woman's heart to feed upon. Will you go with me, dear?"

Poppea was looking into the fire, watching the little flock of sparks creep up and burn a pathway through the soot. "Folks going to meeting," Satira Pegrim had called them when she had watched the same procession, born of the wood embers, in the foreroom chimney. Without looking up, she could feel Miss Emmy's eyes upon her face and knew that the question in them was a double one.

"I should like to go abroad with you," she said at last, still keeping her eyes upon the fire, "and I crave living to the full, but that it might hurt some one else and, through them, me."

"That is what I thought for years, and now I know that what I thought would hurt another did not exist. You say that you would like to go. Now the remaining question is, will you?"

"I will try to make it yes, but between now and then something might happen or Daddy might need me, dear Miss Emmy."

"That will do for a beginning, child. See, the kettle has quite boiled away and you must have fresh water."

"De mail, ladies," said Caleb, advancing at that moment with half a dozen letters on his salver, while at the same time they discovered that Diva, unobserved, had finished the cake.

Miss Emmy's mail consisted of invitations, while of Poppea's two letters one was from Oliver Gilbert, the other from Hugh Oldys.

Gilbert wrote carefully and in detail of every village happening, how that it was proposed, through the influence of the Quality Hill people who did not like the prosaic name of the old town, to unite Westboro and Harley's Mills into a single town to be known as West Harbor. In this case the Westboro post-office would be consolidated with his, and he thought, under the circumstances, with the double work, he would be justified in resigning "his charge." What did Poppea think of it? Then he dwelt upon Hugh Oldys's kindness in coming frequently to see them and supping at the post-office house on Sunday nights. But he did not add that Hugh had cross-questioned him most keenly and persistently about any possible ideas that he might entertain about Poppea's origin, and had quietly told him that sooner or later he should find it out, thus putting Gilbert into something akin to rage; for, blindly enough, the one dread of his life was that some one should appear to claim the lady baby.