It will break up all our nice little two-ing, but we will be his guardian angel.

I will be his guardian and you his angel, and oh, how he would dislike it if he knew it! But wait until odious Mr.Tony meets him to-night! What business is it of his if my hair is red! When he chaffs him for breaking his appointment, I dare say we shall never see him again." "You are so jolly comfortable here! This house is the next best thing to mother," said Edgar, with boyish heartiness, as he stood on the white goatskin with his back to the Olivers' cheerful fireplace.
It was Wednesday evening of the next week.

Polly was clearing away the dinner things, and Edgar had been arranging Mrs.Oliver's chair and pillows and footstool like the gentle young knight he was by nature.
What wonder that all the fellows, even "smirking Tony," liked him and sought his company?
He who could pull an oar, throw a ball, leap a bar, ride a horse, or play a game of skill as if he had been born for each particular occupation,--what wonder that the ne'er-do-wells and idlers and scamps and dullards battered at his door continually and begged him to leave his books and come out and "stir up things"! "If you think it is so 'jolly,'" said Mrs.Oliver, "how would you like to come here and live with us awhile ?" This was a bombshell.

The boy hesitated naturally, being taken quite by surprise.

("Confound it!" he thought rapidly, "how shall I get out of this scrape without being impolite! They would n't give me one 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.