st says he must wear
blue goggles and not look at a book for two months. His father wrote
to me to-day, and he asks if I will read over the day's lessons with
Tom every afternoon or evening, so that he can keep up with the class;
and says that if I will do him this great service he will be glad to
pay me any reasonable sum. He 'ventured' to write me on Professor
Hope's recommendation."

"Oh, Edgar, that is too, too good!" cried Polly, jumping up and down in
delight. "Now hear my news. What do you suppose has happened?"

"Turned-up noses have come into style."

"Insulting! That is n't the spirit I showed when you told me your good
news."

"You 've found the leak in the gas stove."

"On the contrary, I don't care if all the gas in our establishment
leaks from now to--the millennium. Guess again, stupid!"

"Somebody has left you a million."

"No, no!" (scornfully.) "Well, I can't wait your snail's pace. My
lady in black, Mrs. Donald Bird, has been here all the afternoon, and
she offers me twenty-five dollars a month to give up the Baer cubs and
tell stories two hours a day in the orphan asylums and the Children's
Hospital! Just what I love to do! Just what I always longed to do!
Just what I would do if I were a billionaire! Is n't it heavenly?"

"Well, well! We are in luck, Polly. Hurrah! Fortune smiles at last
on the Noble-Oliver household. Let's have a jollification! Oh, I
forgot. Tom Mills wants to come to dinner. Will you mind?"

"Let him come, goggles and all, we 'll have the lame and the halt, as
well as the blind, if we happen to see any. Mamma won't care. I told
her we 'd have a feast to-night that should vie with any of the old
Roman banquets! Here 's my purse; please go down on Sutter
Street--ride both ways--and buy anything extravagant and unseasonable
you can find. Get forced tomatoes; we'll have 'chops and tomato sauce'
a la Mrs. Bardell; order fried oysters in a browned loaf; get a quart
of ice cream, the most expensive variety they have, a loaf of the
richest cake in the bakery, and two chocolate eclairs apiece. Buy
hothouse roses, or orchids, for the table, and give five cents to that
dirty little boy on the corner there. In short, as Frank Stockton
says, 'Let us so live while we are up that we shall forget we have ever
been down'!" and Polly plunged upstairs to make a toilet worthy of the
occasion.

The banquet was such a festive occasion that Yung Lee's Chinese reserve