Poppea of the Post-Office

by Mabel Osgood Wright

"She would not marry him because she did not know his name, and when at last she knew it, he had to go away; suppose, oh, suppose—?" Poppea turned her head from him, but Latimer, through the music and the dreaming, read the thought that had taken possession of her.

The Latimers returned to Harley's Mills the next afternoon, and Stephen, at his wife's instigation, asked Miss Emmy if Poppea might not accompany them. "It's very hard for her, Stephen," she said; "she isn't in a natural frame of mind now at best, and all the new things she sees and feels exaggerate it. I know how it is; last night, at first I loved my fine feathers and then they pricked like pins, and I thought, 'Oh! suppose I should have to wear them always and play a part and turn into some one else and never go back to tell you what day of the week it is, Stevie, or play the organ and peel potatoes and make nighties for stiff old Mrs. Ricker, who scolds because it is so much trouble to wear and wash them!' It simply paralyzes me.

"I know that Poppy feels, 'Suppose I should turn out to be somebody else, who was born to live indoors and be shut in by these double windows and never get back to Daddy and the post-office, and never any more hunt for lady's-slippers and arbutus in the Moosatuck woods with Hugh.'

"I never could understand why people's friends always try to get them away from home if there's anything they want them to forget. At home I can always keep a worry in one place and needn't go out of my way to look at it, but when one is away, it may turn up unexpectedly at any corner."

Miss Emmy, however, had replied: "Send Poppea home with you when she's only been here two weeks? Not a bit of it. The house hasn't been so gay in my memory, besides, I'm having Nora and the seamstress turn her out such a lot of pretty clothes. I'm sure, too, I'm giving her as nice a time as any girl could ask."

A few days later the roving mood returned, and would not be restrained. When the ladies had gone to a morning charitable meeting, leaving Poppea practising some little ballads she had found in one of their many music books, she slipped on her going-out things and, closing the front door, made her way quickly across the square to where the omnibus passed that Mr. Esterbrook had taken the day they two had left the carriage in Central Park. Once in the park, she felt sure she could find her way to that high bank overlooking the river, where she could feel the wind from the hills on her face and look at the water that was always coming, always passing, and yet never left one behind.

She had a small netted purse of dimes and nickels that Satira Pegrim had given her on parting, with the admonition, "'Tain't but what they'll feed and lodge you, Poppy, and more too; 'tisn't that, but mebbe you'd fancy an apple or a bit of spruce gum, and not be able to lay hand on it without buying, or need a penny for an organ monkey, for they do say that all the organs that goes through here in summer heads for New York in winter, and consequently monkeys must be plenty. There's 'busses in New York, too, they say, and most like you'd like to make a change from carriage riding."

Thus equipped, Poppea paid her fare and stole into a corner, where she remained until the omnibus reached the end of its route. Her walk up through the park to the northern outlet was easy, but after that, the other mile was broken and irregular; for though there were old country houses here and there, interspersed with newer buildings, the ground was hilly, many shanties perched upon the rocks and huddled together in the open fields.

Once she asked her way of a pleasant-faced woman at the gate of a large, brown building which proved to be an orphan asylum, and her informant told her that the location was called Bloomingdale, that another large building set in ample grounds that they could see to the northward was the asylum, and that if in going back she would walk down the Bloomingdale Road (Broadway) a piece, she would find a stage that would take her back through Manhattanville and Harlem into the heart of the city. Also she cautioned Poppea not to loiter, for the water side was a lonesome spot for girls.

At last the river was in sight. Getting her bearings, she crossed a lot where a friendly cow followed her, trying to lick the rough woollen of her coat, and crawling between some rails, reached the bank that she had remembered, sitting to rest upon a low stump, where had been laid low one of a group of giant tulip trees.