Poppea of the Post-Office

by Mabel Osgood Wright

"Then the course of the law lies straight," the lawyer said; "but as Mr. Philip Angus is a minor until next year, a guardian must be appointed."

"I shall petition that Mr. Latimer acts as such," Philip replied.

"What has Miss Angus—Gilbert—or whatever she persists in calling herself, to say to that, pray?"

"She bids me say as her spokesman," Philip answered, "that she intends to make no personal claim in the matter. Whatever may be hereafter decided will be out of the range of business or of law and will lie only between her brother and herself."

"A close corporation, it seems," said the lawyer, puckering his mouth for a contemptuous whistle, but catching sight of a glance in Latimer's eye, he checked it by remarking:—

"Pray tell me, as between man and man, is this young woman quite sane? She can claim half of an ample though not princely property."

"Yes, quite sane," said Latimer, in accents as steely and clear-cut as the man's own, "but the expression of her sanity does not chance to take a form familiar to members of your calling."

After this the wheels of local probate law began to turn with their usual deliberation.

At first Miss Emmy proposed to postpone their journey, but now it was Poppea who urged her on, feeling the positive necessity of a change and a little time away from familiar places, in which to readjust herself. She not only now wished to look over the field for musical study at close range, but dreams flitted through her head of a winter either in Florence or in Rome in company with Philip, though not, perhaps, at once; for winter was a perilous time for one of Oliver Gilbert's years, and this winter the post-office would cease to be, in itself no small bereavement to him.

Again Satira, her snapping black eyes always fixed eagerly upon the bustling life of the village centre, came to the fore, and 'Lisha, good, easy man, acquiesced, acknowledging that "twarn't no further to go up to the corn and potato fields of mornings than, living on the hill, to hev to drop down to the village o' nights for a dish of gossip and the news."