“You heard how Mason, the Chicago man, euchred the Mukton gang, didn’t you?” he had shouted to a friend one night at the Magnolia —­“Oh, listen! boys.  They set up a job on him,—­he’s a countryman, you know a poor little countryman—­from a small village called Chicago—­he’s got three millions, remember, all in hard cash.  Nice, quiet motherly old gentleman is Mr. Mason—­butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.  Went into Mukton with every dollar he had—­so kind of Mr. Breen to let him in—­yes, put him down for 2,000 shares more.  Then Breen & Co. began to hoist her up—­five points—­ ten points—­twenty points.  At the end of the week they had, without knowing it, bought every share of Mason’s stock.”  Here Garry roared, as did the others within hearing.  “And they’ve got it yet.  Next day the bottom dropped out.  Some of them heard Mason laugh all the way to the bank.  He’s cleaned up half a million and gone back home—­’so afraid his mother would spank him for being out late o’ nights without his nurse,’” and again Garry’s laugh rang out with such force and earnestness that the glasses on Biffy’s table chinked in response.

This financial set-back, while it had injured, for the time, Arthur Breen’s reputation for being “up and dressed,” had not, to any appreciable extent, curtailed his expenditures or narrowed the area of his social domain.  Mrs. Breen’s dinners and entertainments had been as frequent and as exclusive, and Miss Corinne had continued to run the gamut of the gayest and best patronized functions without, the Scribe is pained to admit, bringing home with her for good and all both her cotillion favors and the gentleman who had bestowed them.  Her little wren-like head had moved from side to side, and she had sung her sweetest and prettiest, but somehow, when the song was over and the crumbs all eaten (and there were often two dinners a week and at least one dance), off went the male birds to other and more captivating roosts.

Mrs. Breen, of course, raved when Corinne at last opened the door of her cage for Garry,—­went to bed, in fact, for the day, to accentuate her despair and mark her near approach to death because of it—­a piece of inconsistency she could well have spared herself, knowing Corinne as she had, from the day of her birth, and remembering as she must have done, her own escapade with the almost penniless young army officer who afterward became Corinne’s father.

Breen did not rave; Breen rather liked it.  Garry had no money, it is true, except what he could earn,—­neither had Corinne.  Garry seemed to do as he darned pleased,—­so did Corinne;—­Garry had no mother,—­neither had Corinne so far as yielding to any authority was concerned.  “Yes,—­let ’em marry,—­good thing—­begin at the bottom round and work up—­” all of which meant that the honorable banker was delighted over the prospect of considerable more freedom for himself and considerable less expense in the household.