Breakfast—­any meal for that matter—­in the high-wainscoted, dark-as-a-pocket dining-room of the successful Wall Street broker—­the senior member of the firm of A. Breen & Co., uncle, guardian and employer of the fresh, rosy-cheeked lad who sat next to Peter on the night of Morris’s dinner, was never a joyous function.

The room itself, its light shut out by the adjoining extensions, prevented it; so did the glimpse of hard asphalt covering the scrap of a yard, its four melancholy posts hung about with wire clothes-lines; and so did the clean-shaven, smug-faced butler, who invariably conducted his master’s guests to their chairs with the movement of an undertaker, and who had never been known to crack a smile of any kind, long or short, during his five years’ sojourn with the family of Breen.

Not that anybody wanted Parkins to crack one, that is, not his master, and certainly not his mistress, and most assuredly not his other mistress, Miss Corinne, the daughter of the lady whom the successful Wall Street broker had made his first and only wife.

All this gloomy atmosphere might have been changed for the better had there been a big, cheery open wood fire snapping and blazing away, sputtering out its good morning as you entered—­and there would have been if any one of the real inmates had insisted upon it—­fought for it, if necessary; or if in summer one could have seen through the curtained windows a stretch of green grass with here and there a tree, or one or two twisted vines craning their necks to find out what was going on inside; or if in any or all seasons, a wholesome, happy-hearted, sunny wife looking like a bunch of roses just out of a bath, had sat behind the smoking coffee-urn, inquiring whether one or two lumps of sugar would be enough; or a gladsome daughter who, in a sudden burst of affection, had thrown her arms around her father’s neck and kissed him because she loved him, and because she wanted his day and her day to begin that way:—­if, I say, there had been all, or one-half, or one-quarter of these things, the atmosphere of this sepulchral interior might have been improved—­but there wasn’t.

There was a wife, of course, a woman two years older than Arthur Breen—­the relict of a Captain Barker, an army officer—­who had spent her early life in moving from one army post to another until she had settled down in Washington, where Breen had married her, and where the Scribe first met her.  But this sharer of the fortunes of Breen preferred her breakfast in bed, New York life having proved even more wearing than military upheavals.  And there was also a daughter, Miss Corinne Barker, Captain and Mrs. Barker’s only offspring, who had known nothing of army posts, except as a child, but who had known everything of Washington life from the time she was twelve until she was fifteen, and she was now twenty; but that young woman, I regret to say, also breakfasted in bed, where her maid had special instructions not to disturb her until my lady’s jewelled fingers touched a button within reach of her dainty hand; whereupon another instalment of buttered rolls and coffee would be served with such accessories of linen, porcelain and silver as befitted the appetite and station of one so beautiful and so accomplished.