“Tell me honestly which you prefer. I’d like so much to go to school, but I am not sure I should be happy there, knowing how lonely you were at home. Say, grandpa, which do you prefer?” and Maddy tried to speak playfully, though her heart-beats were almost audible as she waited for the answer. Grandpa could not deceive her. “He wanted his darling sorely, and he wanted her to be happy,” he said. Perhaps they could get on just as well without her. When Mr. Guy was talking it looked as if they might, he made it all so plain, but the sight of Maddy was a comfort. She was all he had left. Maybe he shouldn’t live long to pester her, and if he didn’t, wouldn’t she always feel better for having staid with her old grandpa to the last? He looked very pale and thin, and his hair was as white as snow. He could not live many years, and, turning resolutely from Guy, who, so long as he held her eye, controlled her, Maddy said: “I’ve chosen once for all. I’ll stay with grandpa till he dies,” and with a convulsive sob she clung tightly to his neck, as if fearful that without such hold on him her resolution would give way. It was in vain that Guy strove to change Maddy’s decision, and late in the afternoon he rode back to Aikenside a disappointed man, with, however, the feeling that Maddy had done right, and that he respected her all the more for withstanding the temptation. CHAPTER XIX. LIFE AT THE COTTAGE. It was arranged that Flora should, for the present at least, remain at the cottage, and Maddy accepted the kindness gratefully. She had become so much accustomed to being cared for by Guy that she almost looked upon it as a matter of course, and did not think what others might possibly say, but when, in as delicate a manner as possible, Guy suggested furnishing the cottage in better style, even proposing to modernize it entirely in the spring, Maddy objected at once. They were already indebted to him for more than they could ever pay, she said, and she would not suffer it. So Guy submitted, though it grated upon his sense of the beautiful and refined terribly, to see Maddy amid so humble surroundings. Twice a week, and sometimes oftener, he rode down to Honedale, and Maddy felt that without these visits life would hardly have been endurable.