Madeline by Mary Jane Holmes

It was a long, tiresome ride for grandpa, from Honedale to Aikenside, and he accepted thankfully the doctor's offer to take Maddy there himself. With this arrangement Maddy was well pleased, as it would thus afford her the opportunity she had so much desired, of talking with the doctor about his bill, and asking him to wait until she had earned enough to pay it.

To the aged couple, parting for the first time with their darling, the day was very sad; but they would not intrude their grief upon the young girl looking so eagerly forward to the new life opening before her; only grandpa's voice faltered a little when, in the morning prayer, he commended his child to God, asking that she might be kept from temptation, and that the new sights and scenes to which she was going might not beget in her a love of the world's vanities, or a disgust for her old home; but that she might come back to it the same loving, happy child as she was then, and never be ashamed of the parents to whom she was so dear. There was an answering sob from the chair where Maddy knelt, and after the devotions were ended, she wound her arm around her grandfather's neck, and parting his silvery locks, said to him earnestly: