Read "Mr. Jervis, Volume II" by B. M. Croker online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The bachelors' ball was to be the dance of the season, and to be done in a style that would set all future competition at defiance, for young Jervis -- who was quite a leading light on the committee -- had developed unexpectedly magnificent ideas, and ordered things right and left as if the hosts were so many millionaires. Half the supper -- at least anything delectable or rare, that could venture to undertake a journey -- was to be despatched from Pelitis. It appeared to the flattered community that the Indian Empire was being ransacked from Calcutta to Bombay, in order to entertain them suitably. Groups of coolies were toiling up with palms from the hot low country, a dozen paharis were seeking orchids among the hills, there would be game from the Terai, pâtés and French sweets from the city of palaces, and fish that had executed their last splash in the Bay of Bengal.
Dr. Loyd nodded his head over his newspaper in the club smoking-room, and remarked that "He supposed it was all as it should be, and truly _fin-de-siècle_!"