d too, that she made him the best of mothers, barring the
fact (for which weakness she was excusable--he was such a love!) that
she spoiled him, and perhaps permitted him to rule her too absolutely.
Was he grateful? Oh, well, that would come in time. Appreciation was not
a quality to be expected in children, and what more natural than that
the boy should accept as a matter of course the good things which she
made plain it was her chief pleasure in life to shower upon him? She was
indeed, as good a mother as it was possible for a mother without a
highly developed imagination to be.

A most lovely woman was Frances Allan, justly admired and liked by all
who knew her. She was pretty and gracious and sunny-tempered and
sweet-natured; charitable--both to society and the poor--and faithful to
her religious duties. Withal, a notable house-keeper, given to
hospitality, fond of "company" and gifted in the art of making her
friends feel at home under her roof. If she was not gifted with a lively
imagination she did not know it, and so had not missed it. As Mr.
Allan's wife she had not needed it. And so she lavished upon Edgar
Goodfellow everything that heart could wish. She delighted to provide
him with pets and toys and good things to eat, and to fill his little
pockets with money for him to spend upon himself or upon treating his
friends. Fortunately, the other Edgar--Edgar the Dreamer--was not
dependent upon her for his pleasures, for the beauties of sky and river
and garden and wood which nourished his soul were within his own reach.

If Mrs. Allan had known Edgar the Dreamer, she would have been puzzled
and alarmed. If Mr. Allan had known him he would have been angry. A man
of action was John Allan. A canny Scotchman he, who owed his success as
a tobacco merchant to energy and strict attention to business. If there
were dreams in the bowl of the pipe, there was no room for them in the
counting-house of a thrifty dealer in the weed. Meditation had no part
in his life--was left out of his composition. He believed in _doing_.
Day-dreaming was in his opinion but another name for idling, and idling
was sin.

The son of their adoption vaguely realized the lack of kinship--the
impossibility of contact between his nature and theirs, and as time went
on drew more and more within himself. The life of Edgar the Dreamer
became more and more secret. So often however, did the warning against
his idle habit fall upon his ears that the pl