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.
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.