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.