e
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