“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I ‘ve been winding myself up into a hard knot, the last six months, and the more I try to disentangle myself, the worse the thing gets. My allowance is n’t half enough; nobody but a miser could live on it. I ‘ve been unlucky, too. I bought a dog, and some one poisoned him before I could sell him; then I lamed a horse from the livery-stable, and had to pay damages; and so it went. The fellows all kept lending me money, rather than let me stay out of the little club suppers, and since I ‘ve shut down on expensive gayeties they’ve gone back on me, and all want their money at once; so does the livery-stable keeper, and the owner of the dog, and a dozen other individuals; in fact, the debtors’ prison yawns before me.”
“Upon my word, I ‘m ashamed of you!” said Polly, with considerable heat. “To waste money in that way, when you knew perfectly well you could n’t afford it, was—well, it was downright dishonest, that’s what it was! To hear you talk about dogs, and lame horses, and club suppers, anybody would suppose you were a sporting man! Pray, what else do they do in that charming college set of yours?”
“I might have known you would take that tone, but I did n’t, somehow. I told you just because I thought you were the one girl in a thousand who would understand and advise a fellow when he knows he’s made a fool of himself and acted like a cur! I did n’t suppose you would call hard names, and be so unsympathizing, after all we have gone through together!”
“I ‘m not!—I did n’t!—I won’t do it again!” said Polly incoherently, as she took a straight chair, planted her elbows on the table, and leaned her chin in her two palms. “Now let’s talk about it; tell me everything quickly. How much is it?”
“Nearly two hundred dollars! Don’t shudder so provokingly, Polly; that ‘s a mere bagatelle for a college man, but I know it’s a good deal for me,—a good deal more than I know how to get, at all events.”
“Where is the debtors’ prison?” asked Polly in an awestruck whisper.
“Oh, there is n’t any such thing nowadays! I was only chaffing; but of course, the men to whom I am in debt can apply to father, and get me in a regular mess. I ‘ve pawned my watch to stave one of them off. You see, Polly, I would rather die than do it; nevertheless, I would write and tell father everything, and ask him for the money, but circumstances conspire just at this time to make it impossible. You know he bought that great ranch in Ventura county with Albert Harding of New York. Harding has died insolvent, and father has to make certain payments or lose control of a valuable property. It’s going to make him a rich man some time, but for a year or two we shall have to count every penny. Of course the fruit crop this season has been the worst in ten years, and of course there has been a frost this winter, the only severe one within the memory of the oldest inhabitant,—that’s the way it always is,—and there I am! I suppose you despise me, Polly?”
“Yes, I do!” (hotly)—“No, I don’t altogether, and I ‘m not good enough myself to be able to despise people. Besides, you are not a despisable boy. You were born manly and generous and true-hearted, and these hateful things that you have been doing are not a part of your nature a bit; but I ‘m ashamed of you for yielding to bad impulses when you have so many good ones, and—oh dear!—I do that very same thing myself, now that I stop to think about it. But how could you, you, Edgar Noble, take that evil-eyed, fat-nosed, common Tony Selling for a friend? I wonder at you!”
“He is n’t so bad in some ways. I owe him eighty dollars of that money, and he says he ‘ll give me six months to pay it.”
“I ‘m glad he has some small virtues,” Polly replied witheringly. “Now, what can we do, Edgar? Let us think. What can, what can we do?” and she leaned forward reflectively, clasping her knee with her hands and wrinkling her brow with intense thought.
That little “we” fell on Edgar’s loneliness of spirit consolingly; for it adds a new pang to self-distrust when righteous people withdraw from one in utter disdain, even if they are “only girls” who know little of a boy’s temptations.
“If you can save something each month out of your allowance, Edgar,” said Polly, finally, with a brighter look, “I can spare fifty or even seventy-five dollars of our money, and you may pay it back as you can. We are not likely to need it for several months, and your father and mother ought not to be troubled with this matter, now that it’s over and done with.”
The blood rushed to Edgar’s face as he replied stiffly: “I may be selfish and recklessly extravagant, but I don’t borrow money from girls. If you wanted to add the last touch to my shame, you ‘ve done it. Don’t you suppose I have eyes, Polly Oliver? Don’t you suppose I ‘ve hated myself ever since I came under this roof, when I have seen the way you worked and planned and plotted and saved and denied yourself? Don’t you suppose I ‘ve looked at you twenty times a day, and said to myself, ‘You miserable, selfish puppy, getting yourself and everybody who cares for you into trouble, just look at that girl and be ashamed of yourself down to the ground!’ And now you offer to lend me money! Oh, Polly, I wouldn’t have believed it of you!”
Polly felt convicted of sin, although she was not very clear as to the reason. She blushed as she said hastily, “Your mother has been a very good friend to us, Edgar; why should n’t we help you a little, just for once? Now, let us go in to see mamma and talk it all over together!”
“If you pity me, Polly, don’t tell her; I could not bear to have that saint upon earth worried over my troubles; it was mean enough to add a feather’s weight to yours.”
“Well, we won’t do it, then,” said Polly, with maternal kindness in her tone. “Do stop pacing up and down like a caged panther. We ‘ll find some other way out of the trouble; but boys are such an anxiety! Do you think, Edgar, that you have reformed?”
“Bless your soul! I ‘ve kept within my allowance for two or three months. As Susan Nipper says, ‘I may be a camel, but I ‘m not a dromedary!’ When I found out where I was, I stopped; I had to stop, and I knew it. I ‘m all right now, thanks to—several things. In fact, I ‘ve acquired a kind of appetite for behaving myself now, and if the rascally debts were only out of the way, I should be the happiest fellow in the universe.”
“You cannot apply to your father, so there is only one thing to do,—that is, to earn the money.”
“But how, when I ‘m in the class-room three fourths of the day?”
“I don’t know,” said Polly hopelessly. “I can tell you what to do, but not how to do it; I ‘m nothing but a miserable girl.”
“I must stay in college, and I must dig and make up for lost time; so most of my evenings will be occupied.”
“You must put all your ‘musts’ together,” said Polly decisively, “and then build a bridge over them, or tunnel through them, or span them with an arch. We ‘ll keep thinking about it, and I’m sure something will turn up; I ‘m not discouraged a bit. You see, Edgar,” and Polly’s face flushed with feeling as she drew patterns on the tablecloth with her tortoise-shell hairpin,—“you see, of course, the good fairies are not going to leave you in the lurch when you ‘ve turned your back on the ugly temptations, and are doing your very best. And now that we ‘ve talked it all over, Edgar, I ‘m not ashamed of you! Mamma and I have been so proud of your successes the last month. She believes in you!”
“Of course,” said Edgar dolefully; “because she knows only the best.”
“But
