“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.”