The big dining-room looked a trifle dreary in spite of the splendor of its appointments; in spite, too, of the fact that there were enough children’s faces around the long table to have brightened it. But though the six owners of these faces ranged between the happy ages of sixteen and three, and were all healthy young folk, they lacked the blithe look they should have worn, and so failed in illumining the stately room.

The youngest member of the house of Graham, a pretty child, had wrinkled her brow until it looked like a pan of cream set in a very breezy dairy. This was because the nurse-maid stood behind her chair, an indignity little Geraldine—known as Jerry—resented bitterly, though it recurred at each breakfast and lunch hour. She showed her resentment by deliberately putting her spoon, full of oatmeal and cream, into her mouth upside down every time the maid’s eyes strayed for a moment, and also, painful though it be to record, by stretching her kid-shoed foot around her high chair in sly and unamiable attempts to kick her humiliating attendant.

The eldest, a boy of sixteen, breakfasted in silence, with a sullen air of aloofness from his family, and a secretive expression foreign to his naturally frank and handsome face. The three girls, and one boy ranging between him and Jerry, seemed rather to regard the meal as something to be gone through with before they were free to attend to matters interesting to each, than as a happy hour spent together before separating for the day.