Surely Heaven would answer the blessings whispered over Maddy by the
delighted old man, and the young girl taking so cheerfully the burden
from which many would have shrunk, should be blessed by God.
With her grandfather's hand upon her head, Maddy could almost feel
that the blessing was descending; but when, in her own room, the one
where she had lain sick for so many weary weeks, her courage began to
give way, and the burden, magnified tenfold by her nervous weakness,
looked heavier than she could bear. How could she stay there, going
through each day with the same routine of literal drudgery--drudgery
which would not end until the two for whom she made the sacrifice were
dead.
"Oh, is there no way of escape, no help?" she moaned, as she tossed
from side to side, "Must my life be wasted here. Surely---"
Maddy did not finish the sentence, for something checked the words of
repining, and she seemed to hear again her grandfather's voice as it
repeated the promise to those who keep with their whole souls the
fifth commandment.
"I will, I will," she cried, while into her heart there crept an
intense longing for the love of him who alone could make her task a
light one. "If I were good like grandma, I could bear everything," she
thought, and turning upon her pillow, Maddy prayed an earnest,
childlike prayer, that God would help her do night, that He would take
from her the proud spirit which rebelled against her lot because of
its loneliness, that pride and love of her own ease and advancement in
preference to others' good might all be subdued; in short that she
might be God's child, walking where He appointed her to walk without a
murmur, and doing cheerfully His will.
Aikenside, and school, and the Catskill Mountains were easier to
abandon after that contrite prayer; but when she thought of Guy, the
fiercest, sharpest pang she had ever felt shot through her heart,
making her cry out so quickly that the little hired girl who shared
her bed moved as if about to waken, but Maddy lay very quiet until all
was still again, when turning a second time to God she tried to pray,
tried to give up what to her was the dearest idol, but she could not
say the words, and ere she knew what she was doing she found herself
asking that Guy should not forsake her. "Let him come," she sobbed,
"let Guy come some time to see me".
Once the tempter whispered to her, that had she accepted Dr. Holbrook
she would have been spared all this, but Maddy turned a deaf ear to
that suggestion. Dr. Holbrook was too noble a man to have an unloving
wife, and not for a moment did she repent of her decision with regard
to him. She almost knew he would say now that she was right in
refusing him, and right in staying there, as she must. Thoughts of the
doctor quieted her, she believed, not knowing that Heaven was already
owning its submissive child, and breathing upon it a soothing
benediction. The moan of the winter wind and the sound of the snow
beating against her little window ceased to annoy her. Heaven,
happiness, Aikenside and Guy, all seem blended into one great good
just within her reach, and when the long clock below the stairs struck
three, she did not hear it, but with the tear stains upon her face she
lay nestled among her pillows, dreaming that her grandmother had come
back from the bright world of glory to bless her darling child.