“How did you know it?” asked Edgar.  “Has Tom Mills been here?”

“What is anybody by the name of Mills to me in my present state of mind!” exclaimed Polly.  “Have you some good news, too?  If so, speak out quickly.”

“Good news?  I should think I had; what else were you hurrahing about?  I ’ve won the scholarship, and I have a chance to earn some money!  Tom Mills’s eyes are in bad condition, and the oculist 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 was sorely tried, and he giggled more than once, while waiting on the table.