Mrs.De Peyster hazily saw perhaps a dozen people; from among whom a bare arm, slipping from the sleeve of a pink silk wrapper, languidly waved toward a small table.

Into the two chairs Mrs.Gilbert indicated the twain sank.
A colored maid who had omitted her collar dropped before Mrs.De Peyster a heavy saucer containing three shriveled black objects immured in a dark, forbidding liquor that suggested some wry tincture from a chemist's shop.

In response to Mrs.De Peyster's glance of shrinking inquiry Matilda whispered that they were prunes.

Next the casual-handed maid favored them with thin, underdone oatmeal, and with thin, bitter coffee; and last with two stacks of pancakes, which in hardly less substantial incarnation had previously been served them by every whiff of kitchen air.
While she pretended to eat this uneatable usurper of her dainty breakfasts, Mrs.De Peyster glanced furtively at the company.

Utterly common.