Dear, patient Oliver Gilbert, in those few words he summed up the struggle that Poppea must fight her way through in the next ten years. Would she be victor or vanquished? As a girl glides unconsciously into womanhood, the mysteries that surround her are like the intangible, yet real, mists of daybreak that may clear away before the purifying rays of the sun, or solidify into angry storm clouds to blot out the entire day.
In addition to these, over Poppea there hung what to her was a darker cloud,—the mystery of the name; and the only rays that could penetrate its shadow must come from the sun of love.
Presently Poppea closed the book, and after resting with her arms clasped about it for a moment, laid it on the table. Going to the window where Gilbert was sitting, she stood behind him, stroking his hair gently and smoothing back one troublesome lock that kept falling over his eyes. Then stooping and laying her cheek upon his, she whispered:—
"Daddy, please say that I need not go away anywhere to school. I can learn a great deal more at the Academy if I try, and besides the Felton Aunties and Mr. Oldys lend me so many books, and they are going to have a French teacher next summer, and Miss Emmy has asked me to read with them. I want to work hard at my music, so that by and by I can play an organ perhaps, or sing in a Bridgeton choir. And I must help you in the post-office. You've said so often lately that people are more careless of their spelling than they used to be, and do not write the addresses well, that I'm quite sure your eyes are getting tired. Please, Daddy? It will make things so much easier."
Gilbert paused a moment in order to control his eagerness to assent.
"I never wanted you to go away, child, but for your own good, and now—it doesn't seem to me that I could bear it. Miss Emmy thinks, though, that you'd be better of a little change, and she's spoken with me about your going down to them next month to spend a fortnight or so, to see the city, hear some good singing, the Opery she calls it, and things like that. Wouldn't you like it, Poppy? Yes, I thought so. Well, you go try your wings outside of Harley's Mills a bit, dearie. Mayhap you'll think you've never tasted life before, but if you get homesick for Daddy and the post-office, and feel peeky for a sight o' the river again and a sniff of the salt harbor wind that blows over Quality Hill, they'll be here, and all you've got to do is just to come right back."
A month later, Poppea was standing between the heavy crimson curtains of one of the Feltons' parlor windows on Madison Avenue, overlooking the Square. The sound of the traffic from the opposite side where Fifth Avenue and Broadway meet and cross was deadened to a sullen roar by the heavy double windows except when the stages passed, and then for a moment the distinct sound of hoof and wheel was distinguishable.
Over in the park many children were playing, rolling hoops to and fro, or wheeling about on roller-skates, having a row of small wheels set lengthwise under the foot that made the sport as much a matter of equipoise as ice skating.
Poppea longed to join them, to rush along and feel the air around her and facing the wind, meet it halfway. For an airing she went to drive every day with the Felton ladies in the new landau which was lined with tufted blue satin, with little mirrors let into the side panels. Sometimes they drove up Fifth Avenue to Central Park, through the east drive to the turn and back again, at a decorous and leisurely pace, Poppea and Mr. Esterbrook sitting opposite the ladies, who were continually bowing and smiling to those in other carriages that they passed. Even as late as 1874 to 1876, all those who kept private equipages were well known to one another, and if a stranger appeared in Mrs. —— barouche, the identity was soon revealed by the sending out of cards for a more or less stately reception to meet the guest. The informal and irresponsible afternoon teas of the last two decades of the century, their chief motive, as voiced by the Autocrat, being to "gabble, gobble, and git," were as yet unconceived. Sometimes a party of young folks on horseback, followed by an instructor, would come in sight, winding among the trees that separate drive from bridlepath, and pass before Poppea, all eagerness, could really see them, for except on very mild days the carriage windows were closed in spite of Miss Emmy's protestation that she never really breathed except in the open air. The windows of Madam Felton's coach had always been closed against the east winds of Boston fifty years before, and Miss Elizabeth felt that to do otherwise would be too much of an exhibition of change. If Miss Emmy chose to sleep with her bedroom window open, that was a different matter; eccentric, of course, but inconspicuous.