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Page 28
"Oh yes! I don't mind that part of it." ("This is worse than the
Inquisition; I don't know but that she will get me in spite of
everything!")
"Oh dear!" thought Mrs. Oliver, "he does n't want to come; and I don't
want him to come, and I must urge him to come against his will. How
very disagreeable missionary work is, to be sure! I sympathize with
him, too. He is afraid of petticoat government, and fears that he will
lose some of his precious liberty. If I had fifty children, I believe
I should want them all girls."
"Besides, dear Mrs. Oliver," continued Edgar, after an awkward pause,
"I don't think you are strong enough to have me here. I believe you
're only proposing it for my good. You know that I 'm in a forlorn
students' boarding-house, and you are anxious to give me 'all the
comforts of a home' for my blessed mother's sake, regardless of your
own discomforts."
"Come here a moment and sit beside me on Polly's footstool. You were
nearly three years old when Polly was born. You were all staying with
me that summer. Did you know that you were my first boarders? You
were a tiny fellow in kilts, very much interested in the new baby, and
very anxious to hold her. I can see you now rocking the cradle as
gravely as a man. Polly has hard times and many sorrows before her,
Edgar! You are old enough to see that I cannot stay with her much
longer."
Edgar was too awed and too greatly moved to answer.
"I should be very glad to have you with us, both because I think we
could in some degree take the place of your mother and Margery, and
because I should be glad to feel that in any sudden emergency, which I
do not in the least expect, we should have a near friend to lean upon
ever so little."
Edgar's whole heart went out in a burst of sympathy and manly
tenderness. In that moment he felt willing to give up every personal
pleasure, if he might lift a feather's weight of care from the fragile
woman who spoke to him with such sweetness and trust. For there is
nothing hopeless save meanness and poverty of nature; and any demand on
Edgar Noble's instinct of chivalrous protection would never be
discounted.
"I will come gladly, gladly, Mrs. Oliver," he said, "if only I can be
of service; though I fear it will be all the other way. Please borrow
me for a son, just to keep me in training, and I 'll try to bear my
honors worthily."
"Thank you, dear boy. Then it is settled, if you are sure that the
living in the city will not interfere with your studies; that is the
main thing. We all look to you to add fresh laurels to your old ones.
Are you satisfied with your college life thus far?"
("They have n't told her anything. That 's good," thought Edgar.) "Oh
yes; fairly well! I don't--I don't go in for being a 'dig,' Mrs.
Oliver. I shall never be the valedictorian, and all that sort of
thing; it does n't pay. Who ever hears of valedictorians twenty years
after graduation? Class honors don't amount to much."
"I suppose they can be overestimated; but they must prove some sort of
excellence which will stand one in good stead in after years. I should
never advise a boy or girl to work for honors alone; but if after doing
one's very best the honors come naturally, they are very pleasant."
"Half the best scholars in our class are prigs," said Edgar
discontentedly. "Always down on the live fellows who want any sport.
Sometimes I wish I had never gone to college at all. Unless you deny
yourself every pleasure, and live the life of a hermit, you can't take
any rank. My father expects me to get a hundred and one per cent. in
every study, and thinks I ought to rise with the lark and go to bed
with the chickens. I don't know whether he ever sowed any wild oats;
if he did, it was so long ago that he has quite forgotten I must sow
mine some time. He ought to be thankful they are such a harmless sort."
"I don't understand boys very well," said Mrs. Oliver smilingly. "You
see, I never have had any to study, and you must teach me a few things.
Now, about this matter of wild oats. Why is it so necessary that they
should be sown? Is Margery sowing hers? I don't know that Polly feels
bound to sow any."
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