Aikenside | Page 7

grandma's up
in the oak chest. Dear me! I wonder if I'll ever live in such a place as
Aikenside?"
"No, no, Maddy, no. Be satisfied with the lot where God has put you,
and don't be longing after something higher, Our Father in heaven
knows just what is best for us; as He didn't see fit to put you up at
Aikenside, 'tain't noways likely you'll ever live in the like of it."
"Not unless I should happen to marry a rich man. Poor girls like me
have sometimes done that, haven't they?" was Maddy's demure reply.
Grandpa Markham shook his head.
"They have, but it's mostly their ruination; so don't build castles in the
air about this Guy Remington."
"Me! Oh, grandpa, I never dreamed of Mr. Guy!" and Madeline
blushed half indignantly. "He's too rich, too aristocratic, though Sarah
said he didn't act one bit proud, and was so pleasant, the servants all
worship him, and Mrs. Noah thinks him good enough for the Queen of

England. I shall think so, too, if he lets you have the money. How I
wish it was Monday night, so we could know sure!"
"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,