Grandma Markham was dead, and the covered sleigh, which late in the

afternoon plowed its way heavily back to Aikenside, carried only Mrs.

Noah, who, with her forehead tied up in knots, sat back among the

cushions, thinking not of the peaceful dead, gone forever to the rest

which remains for the people of God, but of the wayward Guy, who had

resisted all her efforts to persuade him to return with her, instead

of staying where he was, not needed, and where his presence was a

restraint to all save one, and that one Maddy, for whose sake he

stayed.

"She'd be vummed," the indignant old lady said, "if she would not

write to Lucy herself if Guy did not quit such doin's," and thus

resolving she kept on her way, while the subject of her wrath was, it

may be, more than half repenting of his decision to stay, inasmuch as

he began to have an unpleasant consciousness of himself being in

everybody's way.

In the first hour of Maddy's bereavement he had not spoken with her,

but had kept himself aloof from the room where, with her grandfather

and Uncle Joseph, she sat, holding the poor aching head of the latter

in her lap and trying to speak a word of consolation to the old,

broken-hearted man, whose hand was grasped in hers. But Maddy knew he

was there. She could hear his voice each time he spoke to Mrs. Noah,

and that made the desolation easier to bear. She did not look forward

to the time when he would be gone; and when at last he told her he was

going, she started quickly, and with a gush of tears, exclaimed: "No,

no! oh, no!"

"Maddy," Guy whispered, bending over the strange trio, "would you

rather I should stay? Will it be pleasanter for you, if I do?"

"Yes--I don't know. I guess it would not be so lonely. Oh, it's

terrible to have grandmother dead!" was Maddy's response; after which

Guy would have stayed if a whole regiment of Mrs. Noah's had

confronted him instead of one.

Maddy wished it; that was reason enough for him; and giving a few

directions to John, he stayed, thereby disconcerting the neighboring

women who came in to perform the last offices for the dead, and who

wished the young man from Aikenside was anywhere but there, watching

them in all their movements, as they vainly fancied he did. But Guy

thought only of Maddy, watching her so carefully that more than one

meaning glance was exchanged between the women, who, even over the

inanimate form of the dead, spoke together of what might possibly

occur, wondering what would be the effect on Grandpa Markham and Uncle

Joseph. Who would take care of them? And then, in case Maddy should

feel it her duty to stay there, as they half hoped she would, they

fell to pitying the young girl, who seemed now so wholly unfitted for

the burden.




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