“Then Mr. Remington, oh, please send me. I shall die at Aikenside. John will drive me, I know. He used to like me. I’ll ask him,” and Maddy was going in quest of the Aikenside coachman, when Guy held her back, and said:
“John will go if I bid him. But you, Maddy, if I thought it was safe.”
“It is. Oh, let me go,” and Maddy grasped both his hands beseechingly.
If there was a man who could resist the eloquent appeal of Maddy’s eyes at that moment, the man was not Guy Remington, and leaving her alone, he went to John, asking him if it would be possible to get through to Honedale that night.
John shook his head decidedly, but when Guy explained Maddy’s distress and anxiety, the negro began to relent, particularly as he saw his young master too was interested.
“It’ll kill them horses,” he said; “but mabby that’s nothin’ to please the girl.”
“If we only had runners now, instead of wheels, John,” Guy said, after a moment’s reflection. “Drive back to Aikenside as fast as possible, and change the carriage for a covered sleigh. Leave the grays at home and take a pair of farm horses. They can endure more. Tell Flora to send my traveling shawl—Miss Clyde may need it—and an extra carriage robe, and a bottle of wine, and my buckskin gloves, and bring Tom with you, and a snow-shovel, we may have to dig.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” and tying his muffler about his throat, John started off through the storm, his mind a confused medley of ideas, the main points of which were, bottles of wine, snow-shovels, and the fact that his master was either crazy or in love.
Meanwhile, with the prospect of going home, Maddy had grown quiet, and did not refuse the supper of buttered toast, muffins, steak, and hot coffee, which Guy ordered from the small hotel just in rear of the depot. Tired, nervous, and almost helpless, she allowed Guy himself to prepare the coffee, taking it from his hand and drinking it at his bidding as obediently as a child. There was a feeling of delicious rest in being cared for thus, and but for the dying one at Honedale she would have enjoyed it vastly. As it was, however, she never for a moment forgot her grandmother—though she did forget, in a measure, her anxiety, and was able to think how exceedingly kind Guy was. He was like what he used to be, she thought, only kinder; and thinking it was because she was in trouble she accepted all his little attentions willingly, feeling how pleasant it was to have him there, and thinking once with a half shudder of the long, cold ride before her, when Guy would no longer be present, and also of the dreary home where death might possibly be a guest ere she could reach it.
It was after nine when John appeared, his crisp wool powdered with snow, which clung to his outer garments, and literally covered his dark cloth cap.