Down at the cottage in Honedale there were many consultations held and many fears expressed by the aged couple as to what would be the result of all Guy was doing for their child. Woman-like, Grandma Markham felt a flutter of pride in thinking that Maddy was going to school in a big city like New York. It gave her something to talk about with her less fortunate neighbors, who wondered, and gossiped, and envied, but could not bring themselves to feel unkindly toward the girl Maddy, who had grown up in their midst, and who as yet was wholly unchanged by prosperity. Grandpa Markham, on the contrary, though pleased that Maddy should have every opportunity for acquiring the education she so much desired, was fearful of the result—fearful lest there might come a time when his darling would shrink from the relations to whom she was as sunshine to the flowers. He knew that the difference between Aikenside and the cottage must strike her unpleasantly every time she came home, and he did not blame her for her always apparent readiness to go back. That was natural, he thought; but a life in New York, the great city, which to the simple-hearted old man seemed a very Babylon of iniquity, was different, and for a time he objected to sending her there. But Guy persuaded him, and when he heard that Agnes was going, too, he consented, for he had faith in Agnes as a protector. Maddy had never told him of the scene which followed that lady’s return from Saratoga. Indeed, Maddy never told anything but good of Aikenside or its inmates, and so Mrs. Agnes came in for a share of the old people’s gratitude, while even Uncle Joseph, hearing a daily prayer for the “young madam,” as grandpa termed her, learned to pray for her himself, coupling her name with that of Sarah, and asking in his crazy way that God would “forgive Sarah” first, and then “bless the madam—the madam.” A few days before Maddy’s departure, grandpa went up to see “the madam;” anxious to know something more than hearsay about a person to whose care his child was to be partially intrusted. Agnes was in her room when told who had asked for her. Starting quickly, she turned so deadly white that Maddy, who brought the message, flew to her side, asking in much alarm what was the matter. “Only a little faint. It will soon pass off,” Agnes said, and then, dismissing Maddy, she tried to compose herself sufficiently to pass the ordeal she so much dreaded, and from which there was no possible escape.