The address read:
Miss Polly Bragg, english gurl
and sick with fever
Brandon Hospittle
Brandon.
Then she drew a design around it. Jimmy's teacher had
made them once in Jimmy's scribbler, just beautiful. She
was sorry she could not do a bird with a long strip of
tape in his mouth with "Think of Me" or "From a Friend"
or "Love the Giver" on it. Ma knew a man once who could
do them, quick as wink. He died a drunkard with delirium
trimmings, but was terrible smart.
Then she stuck, under the string, a letter she had written
to Camilla. Camilla would get them sent to Polly.
"I know how to get them sent to Camilla too, you bet,"
she murmured. "There are two ways, both good ones, too.
Jim Russell is one way. Jim knows what flowers are to
folks."
She crept softly down the stairs. Mrs Motherwell had left
the kitchen and no one was about. The men were all down
at the barn.
She turned around the cookhouse where the poppies stood
straight and strong against the glowing sky. A little
single red one with white edges swayed gently on its
slender stem and seemed to beckon to her with pleading
insistence. She hurried past them, fearing that she would
be seen, but looking back the little poppy was still
nodding and pleading.
"And so ye can go, ye sweetheart," she whispered. "I know
what ye want." She came back for it.
"Just like Danny would be honin' to come, if it was me,"
she murmured with a sudden blur of homesickness.
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