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 because I should be glad to feel that in any sudden emergency, which I do not in the least expect, we should have a near friend to lean upon ever so little." Edgar's whole heart went out in a burst of sympathy and manly tenderness.

In that moment he felt willing to give up every personal pleasure, if he might lift a feather's weight of care from the fragile woman who spoke to him with such sweetness and trust.

For there is nothing hopeless save meanness and poverty of nature; and any demand on Edgar Noble's instinct of chivalrous protection would never be discounted.
"I will come gladly, gladly, Mrs.Oliver," he said, "if only I can be of service; though I fear it will be all the other way.