Poppea of the Post-Office

by Mabel Osgood Wright

"Some of the names were a mouthful, but they did look real choice on headstones, and liven up the West Hill graveyard a lot. The marble man that came from Boston to set up John Angus's father's moniment allowed he'd never seen such a litery crop o' stones outside east Massachusetts."

A knock at the door sent Mrs. Pegrim scurrying away, Miss Emmy following more slowly, as the front stairs were so steep and high that a misstep was all that lay between the top and bottom. In the foreroom Mr. Latimer was alone, standing hands behind him looking out the south window, the waking voice of the lady baby having called away Mrs. Pegrim.

Miss Emmy had entered softly and waited a moment before she spoke. There was something about Stephen Latimer that always seemed as though it belonged to another world and appealed physically to her spiritual sense. Though of American birth and ancestry, he was a type of the old-world vicar, well born and cultured, yet who, through his intense introspection, spends his life in a small church of a remote parish, seeing each morning's sun through the dimly colored glass of the chancel windows, as a light sent especially from heaven to him, and basking in mystic joy as, between times, his fingers draw from the organ the simple linked notes that hold the village children to their hymns.

In figure Latimer was rather above the medium height, spare without thinness; a smoothly shaven face was saved by distinct mouth lines and a firm chin from the perfect symmetry that seems to lack sympathy. Iron-gray hair belied his age, which was barely forty years. In New England towns at this time people looked askance at men of this type. Patriotism rushed to any form of dissent in which to cloak itself rather than lean toward anything that might be preëstablished and, therefore, un-American,—the middle classes knowing no distinction between catholicity and Romanism.

Such feelings had Stephen Latimer met with in coming to Harley's Mills six years before, yet he stayed on and soon came to be reckoned with as an influence, holding his own and more, by seeing over what he might not see through. The Misses Felton, though not of his fold, had given St. Luke's an organ, such as was not known in Newfield County, and through it, Latimer's influence went out even more than by the pulpit. For though his young wife played at service, on Wednesday afternoons, rain or shine, he sat before the keys and let his fingers speak the words that all might hear who would.

Sometimes the little church was filled by the Quality Hill folk and their guests, sometimes a tired woman with a fretful, half-sick child, or a pauper laborer creeping in to rest from his work on the roads, would be the only audience—it made no difference in the music.

Presently Latimer turned,—"Ah, so you are here! I thought I recognized your roses. Is it not a brave deed of Gilbert's, this going again into the fray after time had healed his wounds and let him at least build a shelter around his sorrow? Talk of the bravery of those who go to battle, I believe his courage in this matter in facing the unknown is the real heroism."

"I think you are right, though I had not looked at it in this way before; I only thought of the amusement of the child's companionship, not the responsibility. Ah, here is little Hugh Oldys."

Presently, Satira Pegrim came in, carrying the lady baby, who would have much preferred to walk, for having acquired this accomplishment all of a sudden, she was loath to relinquish it. Gilbert and 'Lisha Potts followed. It was not until Potts had come quite into the room, crossing to between the centre-table and Mary's melodeon that stood between the windows, that he saw Miss Emmy. All retreat being cut off, he gave a sort of gasp and tried in vain to sink into the depths of his stiff-collared, deep-cuffed Sunday shirt as a turtle disappears into its shell.

The sight of Miss Emmy produced a different effect upon the child, who crowed and stretched her hands toward her new friend, quietly allowed her to fasten the corals upon the plump, bare neck, and afterward tried to look at them with real satisfaction, moving them up and down with her dimpled chin.