noon
It could not be that there was nothing in her poem . She read the lines over again . Two or three were not quite what they ought to be , somehow ; but the rest of them the world would lay hold of , -- that big sympathetic world which knew so much more than Silas Stevens . When the hour came to close the office at noon , she locked the drawer and passed out of the door to the footpath with a sense of triumph under the habitual shyness of her manner . She still shrank from the publicity she had achieved , but she was conscious of an undercurrent of desire that her achievement , since it was real , should be recognized . When the old postmaster died , leaving Lucyet , his only child , alone in the world , and interest in official quarters had procured for her the appointment in her father 's place , a home had also been offered her at Miss Flood 's ; and it was thither that Lucyet now went for her noonday meal . Miss Delia Flood was of most kindly disposition and literary tastes .