“Perhaps we both shall be terribly disappointed,” suggested grandpa, but Maddy was more hopeful.
She, at least, would not fail, while what she had heard of Guy Remington, the heir of Aikenside, made her believe that he would accede at once to her grandpa’s request.
All that night she was working to pay the debt, giving the money herself into the hands of Guy Remington, whom she had never seen, but who came up in her dreams the tall, handsome-looking man she had so often heard described by Sarah Jones after her return from Aikenside. Even the next day, when, by her grandparent’s side, Maddy knelt reverently in the small, time-worn church at Honedale, her thoughts, it must be confessed, were wandering more to the to-morrow and Aikenside, than to the sacred words her lips were uttering. She knew it was wrong, and with a nervous start would try to bring her mind back from decimal fractions to what the minister was saying; but Maddy was mortal, and right in the midst of the Collect, Aikenside and its owner would rise before her, together with the wonder how she and her grandfather would feel one week from that Sabbath day. Would the desired certificate be hers? or would she be disgraced forever and ever by a rejection? Would the mortgage be paid and her grandfather at ease, or would his heart be breaking with the knowing he must leave what had been his home for so many years? Not thus was it with the aged disciple beside her—the good old man, whose white locks swept the large lettered book over which his wrinkled face was bent, as he joined in the responses, or said the prayers whose words had over him so soothing an influence, carrying his thoughts upward to the house not made with hands, which he felt assured would one day be his. Once or twice, it is true, thoughts of losing the dear old red cottage flitted across his mind with a keen, sudden pang, but he put it quickly aside, remembering at the same instant how the Father he loved doeth all things well to such as are His children. Grandpa Markham was old in the Christian course, while Maddy could hardly be said to have commenced as yet, and so to her that April Sunday was long and wearisome. How she did wish she might just look over the geography, by way of refreshing her memory, or see exactly how the rule for extracting the cube root did read, but Maddy forebore, reading only the Pilgrim’s Progress, the Bible, and the book brought from the Sunday school.
With the earliest dawn, however, she was up, and her grandmother heard her repeating to herself much of what she dreaded Dr. Holbrook might question her upon. Even when bending over the washtub, for there were no servants at the red cottage, a book was arranged before her so that she could study with her eyes, while her small, fat hands and dimpled arms were busy in the suds. Before ten o’clock everything was done, the clothes, white as the snowdrops in the garden beds, were swinging on the line, the kitchen floor was scrubbed, the windows washed, the best room swept, the vegetables cleaned for dinner, and then Maddy’s work was finished. “Grandma could do all the rest,” she said, and Madeline was free “to put her eyes out over them big books if she liked.”
Swiftly flew the hours until it was time to be getting ready, when again the short hair was deplored, as before her looking-glass Madeline brushed and arranged her shining, beautiful locks. Would Dr. Holbrook think of her age? Suppose he should ask it. But no, he wouldn’t. If Mr. Green thought her old enough, surely it was not a matter with which the doctor need trouble himself; and, somewhat at ease on that point, Madeline donned her longest frock, and, standing in a chair, tried to discover how much of her pantalets was visible.
“I could see splendidly in Mr. Remington’s mirrors,” she said to herself, with a half sigh of regret that her lot had not been cast in some such place as Aikenside, instead of there beneath the hill in that wee bit of a cottage, whose rear slanted back until it almost touched the ground. “After all, I guess I’m happier here,” she thought. “Everybody likes me, while if I were Mr. Guy’s sister and lived at Aikenside, I might be proud and wicked, and—”
She did not finish the sentence, but somehow the story of Dives and Lazarus, read by her grandfather that morning, recurred to her mind, and feeling how much rather she would rest in Abraham’s bosom than share the fate of him who once was clothed in purple and fine linen she pinned on her little neat plaid shawl, and, tying the blue ribbons of her coarse straw hat, glanced once more at the formidable cube root, and then hurried down to where her grandfather and old Sorrel were waiting for her.
“I shall be so happy when I come back, because it will then be over, just like having a tooth out, you know,” she said to her grandmother, who bent down for the good-by kiss without which Maddy never left her. “Now, grandpa, drive on; I was to be there at three,” and chirruping herself to Sorrel, the impatient Madge went riding from the cottage door, chatting cheerily until the village of Devonshire was reached; then, with a farewell to her grandfather, who never dreamed that the man whom he was seeking was so near, she tripped up the flagging walk, and, as we have seen, soon stood in the presence of not only Dr. Holbrook, but also of Guy Remington.
Poor, poor little Madge!