"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.




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