Children's Book Classics - Kate Douglas Wiggin Edition: 11 Novels & 120+ Short Stories for Children. Kate Douglas Wiggin
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all the rest was perfect; and his chief chums envied him after they had spent an evening with the Olivers. Polly and he had ceased to quarrel, and were on good, frank, friendly terms. “She is no end of fun,” he would have told you; “has no nonsensical young-lady airs about her, is always ready for sport, sings all kinds of songs from grave to gay, knows a good joke when you tell one, and keeps a fellow up to the mark as well as a maiden aunt.”
All this was delightful to everybody concerned. Meanwhile the household affairs were as troublesome as they could well be. Mrs. Oliver developed more serious symptoms, and Dr. George asked the San Francisco physician to call to see her twice a week at least. The San Francisco physician thought “a year at Carlsbad, and a year at Nice, would be a good thing;” but, failing these, he ordered copious quantities of expensive drugs, and the reserve fund shrank, though the precious three hundred and twelve dollars was almost intact.
Poor Mrs. Chadwick sent tearful monthly letters, accompanied by checks of fifty to sixty-five dollars. One of the boarders had died; two had gone away; the season was poor; Ah Foy had returned to China; Mr. Greenwood was difficult about his meals; the roof leaked; provisions were dear; Mrs. Holmes in the next street had decided to take boarders; Eastern people were grumbling at the weather, saying it was not at all as reported in the guide-books; real-estate and rents were very low; she hoped to be able to do better next month; and she was Mrs. Oliver’s “affectionate Clementine Churchill Chadwick.”
Polly had held a consultation with the principal of her school, who had assured her that as she was so well in advance of her class, she could be promoted the next term, if she desired. Accordingly, she left school in order to be more with her mother, and as she studied with Edgar in the evening, she really lost nothing.
Mrs. Howe remitted four dollars from the 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