"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."

"Of course I did. Good gracious, Polly! there are other ways of losing money than by dropping it in the road. I believe girls don't know anything more about the world than the geography tells them,--that it's a round globe like a ball or an orange!"

"Don't be impolite. The less they know about the old world the better they get on, I dare say. Your colossal fund of worldly knowledge does n't seem to make you very happy, just now. How could you lose your money, I ask? You 're nothing but a student, and you are not in any business, are you?"

"Yes, I am in business, and pretty bad business it is, too."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that I 've been winding myself up into a hard knot, the last six months, and the more I try to disentangle myself, the worse the thing gets. My allowance is n't half enough; nobody but a miser could live on it. I 've been unlucky, too. I bought a dog, and some one poisoned him before I could sell him; then I lamed a horse from the livery-stable, and had to pay damages; and so it went. The fellows all kept lending me money, rather than let me stay out of the little club suppers, and since I 've shut down on expensive gayeties they've gone back on me, and all want their money at once; so does the livery-stable keeper, and the owner of the dog, and a dozen other individuals; in fact, the debtors' prison yawns before me."

"Upon my word, I 'm ashamed of you!" said Polly, with considerable heat. "To waste money in that way, when you knew perfectly well you could n't afford it, was--well, it was downright dishonest, that's what it was! To hear you talk about dogs, and lame horses, and club suppers, anybody would suppose you were a sporting man! Pray, what else do they do in that charming college set of yours?"

"I might have known you would take that tone, but I did n't, somehow. I told you just because I thought you were the one girl in a thousand who would understand and advise a fellow when he knows he's made a fool of himself and acted like a cur! I did n't suppose you would call hard names, and be so unsympathizing, after all we have gone through together!"

"I 'm not!--I did n't!--I won't do it again!" said Polly incoherently, as she took a straight chair, planted her elbows on the table, and leaned her chin in her two palms. "Now let's talk about it; tell me everything quickly. How much is it?"

"Nearly two hundred dollars! Don't shudder so provokingly, Polly; that 's a mere bagatelle for a college man, but I know it's a good deal for me,--a good deal more than I know how to get, at all events."

"Where is the debtors' prison?" asked Polly in an awestruck whisper.

"Oh, there is n't any such thing nowadays! I was only chaffing; but of course, the men to whom I am in debt can apply to father, and get me in a regular mess. I 've pawned my watch to stave one of them off. You see, Polly, I would rather die than do it; nevertheless, I would write and tell father everything, and ask him for the money, but circumstances conspire just at this time to make it impossible. You know he bought that great ranch in Ventura county with Albert Harding of New York. Harding has died insolvent, and father has to make certain payments or lose control of a valuable property. It's going to make him a rich man some time, but for a year or two we shall have to count every penny. Of course the fruit crop this season has been the worst in ten years, and of course there has been a frost this winter, the only severe one within the memory of the oldest inhabitant,--that's the way it always is,--and there I am! I suppose you despise me, Polly?"

"Yes, I do!" (hotly)--"No, I don't altogether, and I 'm not good enough myself to be able to despise people. Besides, you are not a despisable boy. You were born manly and generous and true-hearted, and these hateful things that you have been doing are not a part of your nature a bit; but I 'm ashamed of you for yielding to bad impulses when you have so many good ones, and--oh dear!--I do that very same thing myself, now that I stop to think about it. But how could you, _you_, Edgar Noble, take that evil-eyed, fat-nosed, common Tony Selling for a friend? I wonder at you!"

"He is n't so bad in some ways. I owe him eighty dollars of t............