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Page 37
"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'
� 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
was sorely tried, and he giggled more than once, while waiting on the
table.
Polly had donned a trailing black silk skirt of her mother's, with a
white chuddah shawl for a court train, and a white lace waist to top
it. Her hair was wound into a knot on the crown of her head and
adorned with three long black ostrich feathers, which soared to a great
height, and presented a most magnificent and queenly appearance.
Tom Mills, whose father was four times a millionaire, wondered why they
never had such gay times at his home, and tried to fancy his sister
Blanche sparkling and glowing and beaming over the prospect of earning
twenty-five dollars a month.
Then, when bedtime came, Polly and her mother talked it all over in the
dark.
"Oh, mamacita, I am so happy! It's such a lovely beginning, and I
shall be so glad, so glad to do it! I hope Mrs. Bird did n't invent
the plan for my good, for I have been frightfully shabby each time she
has seen me, but she says she thinks of nothing but the children. Now
we will have some pretty things, won't we? And oh! do you think, not
just now, but some time in the distant centuries, I can have a string
of gold beads?"
"I do, indeed," sighed Mrs. Oliver. "You are certainly in no danger of
being spoiled by luxury in your youth, my poor little Pollykins; but
you will get all these things some time, I feel sure, if they are good
for you, and if they belong to you. You remember the lines I read the
other day:--
"'Hast not thy share? On winged feet,
Lo! it rushes thee to meet;
And all that Nature made thy own,
Floating in air or pent in stone,
Will rive the hills and swim the sea
And, like thy shadow, follow thee.'"
"Yes," said Polly contentedly; "I am satisfied. My share of the
world's work is rushing to meet me. To-night I could just say with
Sarah Jewett's Country Doctor, 'My God, I thank thee for my future.'"
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