TWO FIRESIDE CHATS.
It was five o'clock Saturday afternoon, and Edgar Noble stood on the
Olivers' steps, Mrs. Oliver waving her hand from an upper window, and
Polly standing on the stairs saying good-by.
"Come over to dinner some night, won't you, Edgar?" she asked
carelessly; "any night you like, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday."
"Wednesday, please, as it comes first!" said Edgar roguishly. "May I
help cook it?"
"You not only may, but you must. Good-by."
Polly went upstairs, and, after washing the lunch-dishes in a
reflective turn of mind which did away with part of the irksomeness of
the task, went into the parlor and sat on a stool at her mother's feet.
A soft rain had begun to fall; the fire burned brightly; the bamboo
cast feathery shadows on the wall; from a house across the street came
the sound of a beautiful voice singing,--
"Oh, holy night! the stars are brightly shining.
It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth!"
All was peaceful and homelike; if it would only last, thought Polly.
"You are well to-night, mamacita."
A look of repressed pain crossed Mrs. Oliver's face as she smoothed the
bright head lying in her lap. "Very comfortable, dear, and very happy;
as who would not be, with such a darling comfort of a daughter? Always
sunny, always helpful, these last dear weeks,--cook, housekeeper,
nurse, banker, all in one, with never a complaint as one burden after
another is laid on her willing shoulders."
"Don't, mamma!" whispered Polly, seeking desperately for her
handkerchief. "I can stand scolding, but compliments always make me
cry; you know they do. If Ferdinand and Isabella had told Columbus to
discover my pocket instead of America, he would n't have been as famous
as he is now; there, I 've found it. Now, mamma, you know your whole
duty is to be well, well, well, and I 'll take care of everything else."
"I 've been thinking about Edgar, Polly, and I have a plan, but I shall
not think of urging it against your will; you are the mistress of the
house nowadays."
"I know what it is," sighed Polly. "You think we ought to take another
boarder. A desire for boarders is like a taste for strong drink; once
acquired, it is almost impossible to eradicate it from the system."
"I do think we ought to take this boarder. Not because it will make a
difference in our income, but I am convinced that if Edgar can have a
pleasant home and our companionship just at this juncture, he will
break away from his idle habits, and perhaps his bad associations, and
take a fresh start. I feel that we owe it to our dear old friends to
do this for them, if we can. Of course, if it proves too great a tax
upon you, or if I should have another attack of illness, it will be out
of the question; but who knows? perhaps two or three months will
accomplish our purpose. He can pay me whatever he has been paying in
Berkeley, less the amount of his fare to and fro. We might have little
Yung Lee again, and Mrs. Howe will be glad to rent her extra room. It
has a fireplace, and will serve for both bedroom and study, if we add a
table and student-lamp."
"I don't believe he will come," said Polly. "We are all very well as a
diversion, but as a constancy we should pall upon him. I never could
keep up to the level I have been maintaining for the last twenty-four
hours, that is certain. It is nothing short of degradation to struggle
as hard to amuse a boy as I have struggled to amuse Edgar. I don't
believe he could endure such exhilaration week after week, and I am
very sure it would kill me. Besides, he will fancy he is going to be
watched and reported at headquarters in Santa Barbara!"
"I think very likely you are right; but perhaps I can put the matter so
that it will strike him in some other light."
"Very well, mamacita; I 'm resigned. It will break up all our nice
little two-ing, but we will be his guardian angel. I will be his
guardian and you his angel, and oh, how he would dislike it if he knew
it! But wait until odious Mr. Tony meets him to-night! What business
is it of his if my hair is red! When he chaffs him for breaking his
appointment, I dare say we shall never see him again."
"You are so jolly comfortable here! This house is the next best thing
to mother," said Edgar, with boyish heartiness, as he stood on the
white goatskin with his back to the Olivers' cheerful fireplace.
It was Wednesday evening of the next week. Polly was clearing away the
dinner things, and Edgar had been arranging Mrs. Oliver's chair and
pillows and footstool like the gentle young knight he was by nature.
What wonder that all the fellows, even "smirking Tony," liked him and
sought his company? He who could pull an oar, throw a ball, leap a
bar, ride a horse, or play a game of skill as if he had been born for
each particular occupation,--what wonder that the ne'er-do-wells and
idlers and scamps and dullards battered at his door continually and
begged him to leave his books and come out and "stir up things"!
"If you think it is so 'jolly,'" said Mrs. Oliver, "how would you like
to come here and live with us awhile?"
This was a bombshell. The boy hesitated naturally, being taken quite
by surprise. ("Confound it!" he thought rapidly, "how shall I get out
of this scrape without being impolite! They would n't give me one
night out a week if I came!") "I 'd like it immensely, you know," he
said aloud, "and it's awfully kind of you to propose it, and I
appreciate it, but I don't think--I don't see, that is, how I could
come, Mrs. Oliver. In the first place, I 'm quite sure my home people
would dislike my intruding on your privacy; and then,--well, you know I
am out in the evening occasionally, and should n't like to disturb you,
besides, I 'm sure Miss Polly has her hands full now."
"Of course you would be often out in the evening, though I don't
suppose you are a 'midnight reveler.' You would simply have a
latch-key and go out and come in as you liked. Mrs. Howe's room is
very pleasant, as you know; and you could study there before your open
fire, and join us when you felt like it. Is it as convenient and
pleasant for you to live on this side of the bay, and go back and
forth?"
"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."
"I dare say they are not necessities," laughed Edgar, coloring.
"Perhaps they are only luxuries."
Mrs. Oliver looked at the fire soberly. "I know there may be plenty of
fine men who have a discreditable youth to look back upon,--a youth
finally repented of and atoned for; but that is rather a weary process,
I should think, and they are surely no stronger men _because_ of the
'wild oats,' but rather in _spite_ of them."
"I suppose so," sighed Edgar; "but it's so easy for women to be good!
I know you were born a saint, to begin with. You don't know what it is
to be in college, and to want to do everything that you can't and ought
n't, and nothing that you can and ought, and get all tangled up in
things you never meant to touch. However, we 'll see!"
Polly peeped in at the door very softly.
"They have n't any light; that 's favorable. He 's sitting on my
footstool; he need n't suppose he is going to have _that_ place! I
think she has her hand on his arm,--yes, she has! And he is stroking
it! Oh, you poor innocent child, you do not realize that that soft
little hand of my mother's never lets go! It slips into a five and
three-quarters glove, but you 'll be surprised, Mr. Edgar, when you
discover you cannot get away from it. Very well, then; it is settled.
I 'll go back and put the salt fish in soak for my boarder's breakfast.
I seem to have my hands rather full!--a house to keep, an invalid
mother, and now a boarder. The very thing I vowed that I never would
have--another boarder; what grandmamma would have called an 'unstiddy
boy boarder!"
And as Polly clattered the pots and pans, the young heathen in the
parlor might have heard her fresh voice singing with great energy:
"Shall we, whose souls are lighted
With wisdom from on high,--
Shall we to men benighted
The lamp of life deny?"