It being Saturday and market-day, Satira Pegrim had gone to Bridgeton with 'Lisha Potts to look at furniture, for liberal as to matters of time though Potts was as a wooer, he had told Satira on Christmas Day that when a man reached fifty it was time he did something more about settling down than talk of it. Satira, on the whole, had enjoyed a very pleasant courtship during the years of her reign at the post-office. It is given to few women to attend the county fair for thirteen consecutive years at the expense of the same man without incurring further responsibility.

She was now divided between conscientious motives about leaving her brother until Poppea was able to keep house, and the fear lest 'Lisha become discouraged and transfer his affections to Judith, daughter of the widow Baker. This veteran, having failed to secure a second spouse for herself, was now trying to checkmate in turn every available man in the county for the benefit of her daughter. The Bakers lived almost opposite the Pegrim farm that 'Lisha leased, and well Satira knew that nearness means a good deal, especially in winter, so she had consented to look at furniture, saying demurely at the same time:—

"Of course, if you wish my housekeepin' 'xperience in trading, it'll pleasure me to give it, but if you want a woman that can rush into things helterskelter and unthinkin', why not try Judy Baker?"

"No old maids for me, Satiry," he flung back, slapping his knees to give emphasis to his words. "When I get spliced, it'll hev to be either a young woman or a widder, the last bespoke and preferred."

"Sakes alive! and what's Judy but a young woman? She's only turning twenty-four."

"Age hasn't got a thing to do with it; there's old maids at twenty and women folks turning forty that though unmarried ain't, and is young."

"Oliver Gilbert, he hit them differences plumb on the head once't some years back, when he was havin' considerable trouble in making folks understand that he wasn't calculatin' to take a second. Gilbert he's read lots of unor'nary thoughts in books, and he says, says he: ''Lisha, there's three kinds o' females when it comes to considerin' matrimony: widders that understand us men through 'xperience; just plain nice women folks that know what's necessary about us by intooition, as the Lord meant they should; and old maids that thinks they're dead wise, but all they know's by suspicion. Now don't you take one of those last, 'cause they suspect so much more bad of us than we really are that their idee is darned hard to live up tew!' Well, just at that time what I took to, was not gettin' married, but to the woods, and went in for trapping and lumbering for quite a spell.

"Judy Baker's terrible knowin' by suspicion. When she shakes hands, she'll jerk hern away before a man's really caught his grip, like she most knew he was goin' to squeeze it, which he, bein' I, hadn't no such idee. Then she looks mad, 'cause he, bein' I, didn't."

After this complete understanding, Satira Pegrim, who felt that in addition to the trip of inspection 'Lisha deserved some more positive encouragement, told him that if he would begin and mend the fence up at the farm and reshingle the buildings, she would begin to sew her carpet rags and sheets, and that would give them both time to be ready by Poppea's sixteenth birthday—this being the earliest age in Newfield County at which a well-brought-up girl could be expected to keep house, with a neighbor to accommodate in matter of washing and house cleaning.

'Lisha, jubilant over something so definite, not only bought tickets for Christy's Minstrels that chanced to be in Bridgeton that night, but insisted that they two sup at the Railway Hotel as well. Hence Satira's prolonged absence.

Thus it chanced that in two days after the night of Poppea's awakening, the post-office house, put in order from attic to porch, was left in her charge, and in the afternoon she read Gilbert's record written in the old ledger, they two sitting together in the long kitchen where the first scene had been set.

As she read, Gilbert, from the south window, where he sat fitting and adjusting an intricate bit of clockwork, furtively watched the varying color and expression of her face. After slowly reading his simple story, Poppea could not feel for a second that she was an unloved intruder, or fail herself to be filled anew with love for the old man who had opened his door. Her quick intuition and rapidly developing mentality scanned between the lines, learning of many acts of self-sacrifice and devotion that Gilbert believed locked securely in his own thoughts. It was the why of it all that rankled: the circumstances, people, or both that had made the charity necessary. When the girl thought of this, a steely flash came from her eyes, and the will that had been latent, except for childish bursts of impetuosity, set its signals at the corners of lips and nostrils, making the watcher sigh.

"Well, perhaps she may need it to stiffen her up by and by, who knows," said Gilbert to himself; "if only the Lord lets her always love something harder than she hates something else."

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.

One day Mr. Esterbrook had suggested that they two should leave the carriage, walk back to the entrance gate and take a stage or a horse-car home. How Poppea had enjoyed it. There had been enough wind to ripple the water of the reservoir, and the gulls were flying over it, preparing to bed down for the night as they did on Moosatuck. Another time, the ladies always being interested in everything concerning the good of the city, had driven across the park and out the west side of it to see where the building of the Museum of Natural History was to be located, the laying of the corner-stone by President Grant having been set for the following June. Continuing on over poorly paved streets or muddy roadways that ran between partly decayed country houses, or the shanties of squatter settlements, they came within sight of the Hudson, making their way northward through Manhattanville and Bloomingdale to a hill called Claremont, where there was a place of refreshment in an old farm-house.

The sight of the glorious river sweeping down between the high walls of the palisades, with shadowy suggestion of headlands and mountains, made the young girl's breath come quick and short. She could not keep her eyes from the window and she spoke either in monosyllables or kept silent. Could she, might she go out on the bank and see, not through the glass, and feel the wind that was bending the old tulip trees with the rattling seed cups?

Alas, no; it was a place of public entertainment where one, especially a young lady, must be very careful to do nothing unusual. So, though Miss Emmy looked as though she would not only have encouraged Poppea in her desire but gone with her if it had not been so cruelly windy, they turned their backs on the wonderful panorama, while Patrick sought an easier, if less picturesque, way home.

He, in fact, scowled upon the whole trip to such an extent that it was not repeated. The horses, used to half a dozen miles at most, had sweated unduly; the rim of one of the newly painted wheels had sunk between two cobbles and become badly scratched, while Patrick himself had been jolted to such an extent that he had been obliged, in order to keep his seat, to adapt himself to circumstances and do something more than sit on the box and hold the reins, a new condition which raised his ire. It may be said with truth that the tyrannical family coachman of the old rÉgime in New York was the logical and fitting ancestor of the arbitrary chauffeur of to-day. The first, however, having only the "lame horse" plea as his weapon; the other, any one of an endless series of complicated intestinal diseases concealed in the corpulent tonneau.

Thus, after the first week, Poppea's exercise was limited to the correct walk for girls of her age, up or down Fifth Avenue to Washington Square, or with Nora for attendant, dressed in the neat garb of a city maid, down Twenty-third Street and eastward to Gramercy Park, a key to which exclusive enclosure had been given to the Misses Felton by one of their many friends in the surrounding houses. She often looked longingly at the girls of her own age who walked in groups of twos and threes, chatting vivaciously, the maid following far enough away to be out of sight if not out of mind. At home she had never felt lonely. Now, for the first time, she realized that she had no real girl companions of her own age.

This particular afternoon when she stood between the curtains, a hand on each, looking alternately out into the square and then down the length of the three great rooms, divided by marble columns, their size further magnified by the vistas seen in the pier and mantel mirrors, she felt like some wild thing at bay. The ladies had gone in the carriage to Staten Island to visit a distant relative who was ill, taking Nora with them. Mr. Esterbrook had lunched as usual at his club, the Union League, only a few blocks further up the avenue, it having been his considerate custom to leave the house to the ladies and their friends at mid-day ever since luncheon had taken the place of early dinner.

Poppea tried to open first a front and then a back window to get a breath of air, but without success. She was too wise now to refresh herself by sitting on the outer doorstep, since the doing of it, during the first week, had brought a very decided remonstrance from the usually sympathetic Miss Emmy.

For a minute she was minded to get her hat and join the children in the square; then some street musicians with harp and violins struck up before the next house, riveting her attention. The playing was spirited and the time good, though imperfect as to technique. The pent-up energy in Poppea began to surge and sway her body to the music. Stepping from the recessed window before the long mirror, where there was a space clear of furniture, she began to dance, not with set steps or calculated gestures, merely letting the music lead her.

When she finally stopped, head forward, a sort of half-mocking courtesy to the looking-glass, laughing,—her good temper restored,—she was startled to see a reflection besides her own, that of a young man of perhaps eight and twenty, of medium height, clean shaven at a time when this was uncommon, immaculate as to clothes, having an air of being perfectly at ease in unusual surroundings that Poppea noticed even in her confusion.

Caleb had ushered him through the sliding door unthinkingly, for the colored servitor was standing transfixed, one hand raised in warning, saying in the brief time that it took Poppea to prepare for flight:—

"Sho, I didn't know you was here, Miss Poppy; I 'lowed Marsa Esterbrook was corned in."

Then in a confidential whisper to the caller as the girl slipped past him and flew rather than ran up the thickly padded stairs, he added:—

"It's jest Miss Poppy, a young missy from de country that Miss Emmy thinks a mighty heap of. She was lonesome-like I reckon, and just a-dancin' to keep up her spirits. Do set down, Marsa Winslow; the ladies should shuah be back by now and they'll feel powerful bad to have missed you. I well recomember your lady mother back in the old Boston time; she and Miss Emmy was like two twins for standing up for each other.

"Oh, so you'se livin' in New York an' can drop in any time. I'll deliber your message wif honah, sah, to the ladies' pleasure," and Caleb bowed the young man out, laying the silver salver with the bit of pasteboard in a spot upon the hall table where it could not fail to attract attention. The card read, Bradish Winslow, The Loiterers' Club.

"I should like to meet that girl four or five years hence; she's a wonderful bit of live color already," was Winslow's mental comment as he went down the steps, hesitating at the foot whether he should go up or down the avenue, or across the square.

Poppea, having gained her room, where the windows consisted of a single sash, threw one of them wide open, and kneeling on the floor so that her chin rested on the sill, drew in a long, refreshing breath.

For a moment she wondered who the caller might be, and thought of her dancing with regret, but on the return of the Misses Felton they had such a delightful bit of news to impart that she forgot even to ask his name. The following week the opera of Lohengrin was to be sung, Christine Nilsson taking the part of Elsa for the last time in New York.

No such voice, Miss Felton declared, had been heard in America, except possibly that of Nilsson's countrywoman, Jenny Lind. To hear her would be a musical education in itself for Poppea; so not only had a box been secured for the night, but Stephen Latimer and his wife were coming to complete the party, in spite of the fact that there were some who thought the witnessing of all dramatic performances unclerical. That evening Miss Emmy played some fragments of the opera on the grand piano, promising Poppea that Stephen Latimer should explain its construction and motive to her when he came.

For a few days Poppea forgot her desire to run away in thinking of the opera, and trying to pick out bits from the score, but its complication baffled her and she had to content herself with persuading Nora to continue their walk from Gramercy Park down Irving Place to Fourteenth Street that she might look at the outside of the Academy of Music that was her Mecca.

When the strain began again and she was once more longing for freedom and a five-mile walk up the bank of the Moosatuck, alone or with Hugh, the magic day came and with it the Latimers, Mrs. Stephen dimpling under a bewitching spring bonnet entirely of her own manufacture, a cherished possession. This, Miss Emmy told her playfully but firmly, she could not wear to the opera, but that Bachmann should dress her hair when she came to do theirs.

"No matter what Stephen may say to-night, I'm going to dress you to suit myself," said Miss Emmy. "This pink brocade with the silver trimmings, your hair loosened into a crown of puffs with the pink feather at the side, and the coral comb. The coral necklace and the white lace shawl for shoulder drapery, if you think low neck a trifle too much for a clergyman's lady, and these white gloves topped with coral bands."

"I will wear the white gloves gladly," said Jeanne Latimer, looking at her two forefingers rather ruefully. One was roughened by the use of the vegetable knife, for the times had been hard and houseworkers scarce at Harley's Mills that winter; while the other was pricked deep from the sewing of harsh muslin for the clothing that some would otherwise have lacked. "But really, Miss Emmy, don't you think it would look more honest if I wore my own gown?"

Miss Emmy laughingly acknowledged that perhaps it might, yet held her point with determination, and eight o'clock saw the party of six gathered in the opera-box, their faces differing almost as much in expression as the details of their clothing.

Jeanne Latimer and Miss Emmy were what might be called very much dressed without having overstepped the bounds of good taste. Miss Emmy wore pale blue satin with much fine lace and pearl ornaments; though pale in the morning, her color always grew somewhat hectic at night and helped justify a combination by far too young for her years.

While Jeanne Latimer enjoyed the novel sensation of wearing her gay attire, Miss Emmy's pleasure came from the conscious result of wearing hers. Miss Felton, who sat behind her sister, wore an almost straight robe of black velvet; the point lace fichu crossed in front and fastened by a heavy diamond brooch, her only ornament, covered all but her slim white throat. Her hair was parted in bandeaux and coiled at the back of her head as usual, the only addition being two waxy white camelias tucked into the mass. During the last two years, however, a decided thread of silver had woven itself among the dark coils. Talking in short sentences to, rather than with, Mr. Esterbrook, who sat next her, she had an anxious air and seemed to be striving to keep him awake, for scarcely had they been seated when an air of intense weariness came over his elaborately dressed person, and he began to nod.

The remaining two of the party thus had the right-hand corner of the box to themselves, Poppea, in her simple white summer muslin relieved by a cherry sash, sitting in a low chair, with Stephen Latimer back of her. From the moment of their entrance, he had busied himself in explaining the great building to her, from the arrangement of the seats, boxes, and orchestra, to the uses of the prompter's egg-shaped box. Music and certain phases of human nature that he felt allied to the Divine were the food for this man's dreams, and to-night he would have both very near.

Presently the orchestra took their places, falling into silence at the tap of the leader's baton and the prelude to the first act began with the high notes of the Grail motif, rising to a climax of trumpets and trombones, then fading away to silence again. With a word here and there to focus the story of the libretto, Latimer called Poppea's attention to the new theme, where the Herald calls for a champion for the accused girl, the Elsa motif is voiced by the wood-wind instruments, and presently Lohengrin appears in the boat drawn by the swan.

To Poppea the scene had the mystery of fairyland, but it was, at the same time, her first glimpse of visible active romance, and through the scenes that followed came her primal realization of the love of man and woman as separate from the friendship of girl and boy.

When Lohengrin sets the one condition for the marriage that Elsa shall never ask him his name and Latimer explained the Mystery of the Name motif, Poppea with hands clasped in the folds of her gown sat with strained eyes and parted lips scarcely breathing. Once heard, this motif never left her ears, whether it was whispered by the wood-wind instruments, the horn, or proclaimed by the whole orchestra, as when in the scene of the bridal chamber the knight calls Elsa passionately by name, but she, not knowing his, may not speak it, and so at last rebels and demands to know.

As Latimer watched Poppea's face, he saw the change that fell upon it. The joy of music, color, and pageant faded from it, until, finally, when the boat, now guided by the Dove of the Grail, bears Lohengrin, its knight, away and Elsa falls fainting, he saw Poppea's lips, from which the color had fled, frame rather than say:—

"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.

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.