"I suppose they can be overestimated; but they must prove some sort of excellence which will stand one in good stead in after years. I should never advise a boy or girl to work for honors alone; but if after doing one's very best the honors come naturally, they are very pleasant."
"Half the best scholars in our class are prigs," said Edgar discontentedly. "Always down on the live fellows who want any sport. Sometimes I wish I had never gone to college at all. Unless you deny yourself every pleasure, and live the life of a hermit, you can't take any rank. My father expects me to get a hundred and one per cent. in every study, and thinks I ought to rise with the lark and go to bed with the chickens. I don't know whether he ever sowed any wild oats; if he did, it was so long ago that he has quite forgotten I must sow mine some time. He ought to be thankful they are such a harmless sort."
"I don't understand boys very well," said Mrs. Oliver smilingly. "You see, I never have had any to study, and you must teach me a few things. Now, about this matter of wild oats. Why is it so necessary that they should be sown? Is Margery sowing hers? I don't know that Polly feels bound to sow any."
"I dare say they are not necessities," laughed Edgar, coloring. "Perhaps they are only luxuries."
Mrs. Oliver looked at the fire soberly. "I know there may be plenty of fine men who have a discreditable youth to look back upon,--a youth finally repented of and atoned for; but that is rather a weary process, I should think, and they are surely no stronger men because of the 'wild oats,' but rather in spite of them."
"I suppose so," sighed Edgar; "but it's so easy for women to be good! I know you were born a saint, to begin with. You don't know what it is to be in college, and to want to do everything that you can't and ought n't, and nothing that you can and ought, and get all tangled up in things you never meant to touch. However, we 'll see!"
Polly peeped in at the door very softly.
"They have n't any light; that 's favorable. He 's sitting on my footstool; he need n't suppose he is going to have that place! I think she has her hand on his arm,--yes, she has! And he is stroking it! Oh, you poor innocent child, you do not realize that that soft little hand of my mother's never lets go! It slips into a five and three-quarters glove, but you 'll be surprised, Mr. Edgar, when you discover you cannot get away from it. Very well, then; it is settled. I 'll go back and put the salt fish in soak for my boarder's breakfast. I seem to have my hands rather full!--a house to keep, an invalid mother, and now a boarder. The very thing I vowed that I never would have--another boarder; what grandmamma would have called an 'unstiddy boy boarder!"
And as Polly clattered the pots and pans, the young heathen in the parlor might have heard her fresh voice singing with great energy:
"Shall we, whose souls are lighted
With wisdom from on high,--
Shall we to men benighted
The lamp of life deny?"