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.