monthly rent, in consideration of Spanish lessons given to her two oldest children. This experiment proved a success, and Polly next accepted an offer to come three times a week to the house of a certain Mrs. Baer to amuse (instructively) the four little Baer cubs, while the mother Baer wrote a “History of the Dress-Reform Movement in English-Speaking Nations.”
For this service Polly was paid ten dollars a month in gold coin, while the amount of spiritual wealth which she amassed could not possibly be estimated in dollars and cents. The ten dollars was very useful, for it procured the services of a kind, strong woman, who came on these three afternoons of Polly’s absence, put the entire house in order, did the mending, rubbed Mrs. Oliver’s tired back, and brushed her hair until she fell asleep.
So Polly assisted in keeping the wolf from the door, and her sacrifices watered her young heart and kept it tender. “Money may always be a beautiful thing. It is we who make it grimy.”
Edgar shared in the business conferences now. He had gone into convulsions of mirth over Polly’s system of accounts, and insisted, much against her will, in teaching her book-keeping, striving to convince her that the cash could be kept in a single box, and the accounts separated in a book.
These lessons were merry occasions, for there was a conspicuous cavity in Polly’s brain where the faculty for mathematics should have been.
“Your imbecility is so unusual that it ‘s a positive inspiration,” Edgar would say. “It is n’t like any ordinary stupidity; there does n’t seem to be any bottom to it, you know; it ‘s abnormal, it ‘s fascinating, Polly!”
Polly glowed under this unstinted praise. “I am glad you like it,” she said. “I always like to have a thing first-class of its kind, though I can’t pride myself that it compares with your Spanish accent, Edgar; that stands absolutely alone and unapproachable for badness. I don’t worry about my mathematical stupidity a bit since I read Dr. Holmes, who says that everybody has an idiotic area in his mind.”
There had been very little bookkeeping to-night. It was raining in torrents. Mrs. Oliver was talking with General M–- in the parlor, while Edgar and Polly were studying in the dining-room.
Polly laid down her book and leaned back in her chair. It had been a hard day, and it was very discouraging that a new year should come to one’s door laden with vexations and anxieties, when everybody naturally expected new years to be happy, through January and February at least.
“Edgar,” she sighed plaintively, “I find that this is a very difficult world to live in, sometimes.”
Edgar looked up from his book, and glanced at her as she lay back with closed eyes in the Chinese lounging-chair. She was so pale, so tired, and so very, very pretty just then, her hair falling in bright confusion round her face, her whole figure relaxed with weariness, and her lips quivering a little, as if she would like to cry if she dared.
Polly with dimples playing hide and seek in rosy cheeks, with dazzling eyes, and laughing lips, and saucy tongue, was sufficiently captivating; but Polly with bright drops on her lashes, with a pathetic droop in the corners of her mouth and the suspicion of a tear in her voice,—this Polly was irresistible.
“What’s the matter, pretty Poll?”
“Nothing specially new. The Baer cubs were naughty as little demons to-day. One of them had a birthday-party yesterday, with four kinds of frosted cake. Mrs. Baer’s system of management is n’t like mine, and until I convince the children I mean what I say, they give me the benefit of the doubt. The Baer place is so large that Mrs. Baer never knows where disobedience may occur, and that she may be prepared she keeps one of Mr. Baer’s old slippers on the front porch, one in the carriage-house, one in the arbor, one in the nursery, and one under the rose hedge at the front gate. She showed me all these haunts, and told me to make myself thoroughly at home. I felt tempted to-day, but I resisted.”
“You are working too hard, Polly. I propose we do something about Mrs. Chadwick. You are bearing all the brunt of other people’s faults and blunders.”
“But, Edgar, everything is so mixed: Mrs. Chadwick’s year of lease is n’t over; I suppose she cannot be turned out by main force, and if we should ask her to leave the house it might go unrented for a month or two, and the loss of that money might be as much as the loss of ten or fifteen dollars a month for the rest of the year. I could complain of her to Dr. George, but there again I am in trouble. If he knew that we are in difficulties, he would offer to lend us money in an instant, and that would make mamma ill, I am sure; for we are under all sorts of obligations to him now, for kindnesses that can never be repaid. Then, too, he advised us not to let Mrs. Chadwick have the house. He said that she had n’t energy enough to succeed; but mamma was so sorry for her, and so determined to give her a chance, that she persisted in letting her have it. We shall have to find a cheaper flat, by and by, for I ‘ve tried every other method of economizing, for fear of making mamma worse with the commotion of moving.”
Chapter X.
Edgar Goes to Confession
“I ‘m afraid I make it harder, Polly, and you and your mother must be frank with me, and turn me out of the Garden of Eden the first moment I become a nuisance. Will you promise?”
“You are a help to us, Edgar; we told you so the other night. We could n’t have Yung Lee unless you lived with us, and I could n’t earn any money if I had to do all the housework.”
“I ‘d like to be a help, but I ‘m so helpless!”
“We are all poor together just now, and that makes it easier.”
“I am worse than poor!” Edgar declared.
“What can be worse than being poor?” asked Polly, with a sigh drawn from the depths of her boots.
“To be in debt,” said Edgar, who had not the slightest intention of making this remark when he opened his lips.
Now the Olivers had only the merest notion of Edgar’s college troubles; they knew simply what the Nobles had told them, that he was in danger of falling behind his class. This, they judged, was a contingency no longer to be feared; as various remarks dropped by the students who visited the house, and sundry bits of information contributed by Edgar himself, in sudden bursts of high spirits, convinced them that he was regaining his old rank, and certainly his old ambition.
“To be in debt,” repeated Edgar doggedly, “and to see no possible way out of it. Polly, I ‘m in a peck of trouble! I ‘ve lost money, and I ‘m at my wits’ end to get straight again!”
“Lost money? How much? Do you mean that you lost your pocket-book?”
“No, no; not in that way.”
“You mean that you spent it,” said Polly. “You mean you overdrew your allowance.”
“Of course I did. Good gracious, Polly! there are other ways of losing money than by dropping it in the road. I believe girls don’t know anything more about the world than the geography tells them,—that it’s a round globe like a ball or an orange!”
“Don’t be impolite. The less they know about the old world the better they get on, I dare say. Your colossal fund of worldly
