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 I know the best and the worst too, and I believe in you!  It seems to me the best is always the truest part of one, after all.  No, we are not going to be naughty any more; we are going to earn that hateful Tony’s money; we are going to take all the class honors, just for fun, not because we care for such trifles, and we are going home for the summer holidays in a blaze of glory!”

Edgar rose with a lighter heart in his breast than he had felt there for many a week.  “Good-night, Parson Polly,” he said rather formally, for he was too greatly touched to be able to command his tones; “add your prayers to your sermons, and perhaps you ’ll bring the black sheep safely into the fold.”