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.