There was an interval of slight awkwardness, which Susy endeavored to displace.

"There has been," she remarked, with easy conversational lightness, "quite an excitement about our French teacher being changed.

The girls in our class think it most disgraceful." And this was all she could say after a separation of four years! Clarence was desperate, but as yet idealess and voiceless.

At last, with an effort over his spoon, he gasped a floating recollection: "Do you still like flapjacks, Susy ?" "Oh, yes," with a laugh, "but we don't have them now." "And Mose" (a black pointer, who used to yelp when Susy sang), "does he still sing with you ?" "Oh, HE'S been lost ever so long," said Susy composedly; "but I've got a Newfoundland and a spaniel and a black pony;" and here, with a rapid inventory of her other personal effects, she drifted into some desultory details of the devotion of her adopted parents, whom she now readily spoke of as "papa" and "mamma," with evidently no disturbing recollection of the dead.

From which it appeared that the Peytons were very rich, and, in addition to their possessions in the lower country, owned a rancho in Santa Clara and a house in San Francisco.