ly sometimes. Garry, here, never stays five
minutes when he comes to see me, so many people are after him all the
time. Please say you'll come!"

There was a note in the boy's voice that swept away all the older man's
scruples.

"Come, my son! Of course I'll come," burst out Peter. "I'll be there at
nine o'clock."

As Morris and the others passed between the table and the wall on
their way to the cloak-room, Minott, who had listened to the whole
conversation, waited until he thought Peter had gone ahead, and then,
with an impatient gesture, said:

"What the devil, Jack, do you want to waste your time over an old fellow
like that for?"

"Oh, Garry, don't--"

"Don't! A bald-headed old pill who ought to have--"

Then the two passed out of hearing.

CHAPTER IV

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