[Illustration: IN A HALF WHISPER SOME ONE CALLED, “MADDY! MADDY!”—_Madeline, Page 326._] MADELINE BY MARY J. HOLMES [Illustration: [Logo]] G. W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY PUBLISHERS NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1881, DANIEL HOLMES. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. The Examining Committee 7 II. Madeline Clyde 23 III. The Examination 35 IV. Grandpa Markham 53 V. The Result 65 VI. Convalescence 86 VII. The Drive 106 VIII. Shadowings of What was to Be 116 IX. The Decision 127 X. At Aikenside 131 XI. Guy at Home 146 XII. Lucy’s Letter 173 XIII. Gossip 186 XIV. Maddy and Lucy 203 XV. The Holidays 225 XVI. The Doctor and Maddy 256 XVII. Womanhood 267 XVIII. The Burden 282 XIX. Life at the Cottage 302 XX. The Burden grows Heavier 322 XXI. The Interval before the Marriage 337 XXII. Before the Bridal 342 XXIII. Lucy 364 XXIV. Finale 369 MADELINE. CHAPTER I. THE EXAMINING COMMITTEE. Twenty-five years ago the people of Devonshire, a little town among the New England hills, had the reputation of being rather quarrelsome. Sometimes about meek, gentle Mrs. Tiverton, the minister’s wife, whose manner of housekeeping, or style of dress, did not exactly suit them; sometimes about the minister himself, who vainly imagined that if he preached three sermons a week, attended the Wednesday evening prayer-meeting, the Thursday evening sewing society, visited all the sick, and gave to every beggar that called at his door, besides superintending the Sunday-school, he was earning his salary of six hundred per year.