The Joys were at breakfast. It was one of the points in which Mrs. Joy took most pride, that this meal was served in a special apartment known as the breakfast-room, and not, as with most families, in the room where they dined. The breakfast-room was not large, but sumptuous in all its appointments. A critical taste might have objected that the plush curtains which shaded the windows were too heavy for summer; that the begilded wallpaper "swore" a little at its own dado and frieze, as well as deadened the effect of the pictures which hung against it; and that the drapery of lace and velvet which veiled the fireplace made a fire inconvenient and almost impossible, however cold the weather might be. But a critical taste might have found the same faults with the whole house. The general effect was of costliness and magnificence; but the details were at variance, and comfort and homelikeness had been sacrificed in the effort to make everything fine. There was a library, with almost no books in it; a ball-room, which was used only for balls, and looked bare and shut up on ordinary days; a huge drawing-room, full of costly toys,--tables loaded with Sèvres cups, other tables with processions of pug-dogs in precious china, snuff-boxes, patch-boxes; chimney-piece crowded with porcelain figures and bits of old Dresden ware; there was a great deal of carving and _or-moulu_,--but it all had the air of being created and kept for company use, and deserted the moment company went away. Mrs. Joy had only got so far in her art education as this, that she bought everything which cost a great deal of money and which her neighbors bought, and she never stopped to reason about such minor points as taste, fitness, convenience, or the adaptation of an article to her own particular needs. Mrs. Joy was the very image of a prosperous woman, as she sat behind her heavy silver coffee-pots and cream-jugs, reading the Sunday paper, to get which her groom had ridden a couple of miles before breakfast. Her very black hair was trained into a line of formal rings across her forehead, which as yet scarcely showed a wrinkle. Her tightly laced figure was almost as slender as her daughter's; and the hand sparkling with diamonds, which held the paper, was white and youthful. Handsome she certainly was; and people called her agreeable, for she talked a great deal, in a noisy, lively way, and had a caressing manner for all persons whom she thought it worth her while to caress. But her face was hard; and when the society smile died out of it, it was neither intelligent nor kindly. Mrs. Joy had been extremely pretty in her youth. Berenice was like her; but Tom Joy the son resembled his father, who had died three or four years before the opening of this little story. Berry and her friend Ethel Curtis were talking about a sailing party which they had planned for the next day.