The grandeur of it almost oppressed Poppea for a moment, then it seemed to compact itself and close up until the river became the Moosatuck winding its way from the hill country down to the Mills, and then onward through the marshes to the bay. There were not many boats upon it, but one was hers, built by 'Lisha Potts, and one was Hugh Oldys's, and they two were deciding which boat they should use, and whether both should row or only Hugh, for often they rowed together. Then the second boat disappeared, and Poppea rowed her boat, and in the stern sat Daddy fishing—Daddy, who seldom took a holiday. How young he looked when he caught that fine big bass; what jolly stories he told, and how good Satira Pegrim's basket lunch had tasted. This vision was vivid, and reminded Poppea that she was hungry.
Close in some bushes beside her a song-sparrow warbled his clear spring ditty, and the lump that had been gathering in her throat tightened and would not be swallowed. Scrambling to her feet she took one final look up and down before turning homeward, and, as she did so, her eyes fell upon a small marble shaft surmounted by an urn that stood not a dozen feet from where she had been sitting.
There were several like it in the hill graveyard at home, but this could not be a graveyard with only a single stone. Going near she looked for a name or date, but found only these words, Erected to an Amiable Child.
Who was it? Was this another mystery of a name. Had the child none?
Waving her hand good-by to the great river, she retraced her steps toward the Bloomingdale Road, and at that moment she heard in her ear, with bell-like clearness, the voice of Gilbert, calling to her as he often did when she stayed out late in the bank garden below the orchard: "Come home, Poppy, it's lonesome for you out there by yourself; besides, Daddy needs you!" Yes, Daddy needed her; that must be the answer to everything that troubled her.
The next day it was Poppea who asked if she might go home, and Miss Emmy said yes.
CHAPTER X
PHILIP
When Poppea was nineteen, she became the assistant postmaster at Harley's Mills, with all the legal formality that the name implied, Mr. Oldys having "gone on her bond" as the local saying ran. Not that Gilbert's mental faculties were in any way impaired, but at seventy he was naturally less alert physically, and the long hours told on him. At least Poppea said so, and urged him to spend more time in the garden during pleasant weather in company with his pipe and one of his well-worn books. These, however, had palled upon him, or, as he once told Stephen Latimer, "It seems as if since Poppy grew up and into things, Mr. Plutarch is rather far back, and I don't any more care if Alcibiades returned or not, or much about the siege of Troy, though that's livelier. I want something with more up-to-date flesh and blood in it that'll help me to understand things that come up."