Madge her schoolmates called her, because the name suited her, they
said; but Maddy they called her at home, and there was a world of
unutterable tenderness in the voices of the old couple, her
grandparents, when they said that name, while their dim eyes lighted
up with pride and joy when they rested upon the young girl who
answered to the name of Maddy. Their only daughter's only child, she
had lived with them since her mother's death, for her father was a sea
captain, who never returned from his last voyage to China, made two
months before she was born. Very lonely and desolate would the home of
Grandfather Markham have been without the presence of Madeline, but
with her there, the old red farmhouse seemed to the aged couple like a
paradise.
Forty years they had lived there, tilling the rather barren soil of
the rocky homestead, and, saving the sad night when they heard that
Richard Clyde was lost at sea, and the far sadder morning when their
daughter died, bitter sorrow had not come to them; and, truly thankful
for the blessings so long vouchsafed them, they had retired each night
in peace with God and man, and risen each morning to pray. But a
change was coming over them. In an evil hour Grandpa Markham had
signed a note for a neighbor and friend, who failed to pay, and so it
all fell on Mr. Markham, who, to meet the demand, mortgaged his
homestead; the recreant neighbor still insisting that long before the
mortgage should be due, he certainly would be able himself to meet it.
This, however, he had not done, and, after twice begging off a
foreclosure, poor old Grandfather Markham found himself at the mercy
of a grasping, remorseless man, into whose hands the mortgage had
passed. It was vain to hope that Silas Slocum would wait. The money
must either be forthcoming, or the red farmhouse be sold, with its few
acres of land. Among his neighbors there was not one who had the money
to spare, even if they had been willing to do so. And so he must look
among strangers.
"If I could only help," Madeline had said one evening when they sat
talking over their troubles; "but there's nothing I can do, unless I
apply for our school this summer. Mr. Green is committeeman; he likes
us, and I don't believe but what he'll let me have it. I mean to go
and see;" and, ere the old people had recovered from their
astonishment, Madeline had caught her bonnet and shawl, and was flying
down the road.