I was very little," said the boy, half apologetically.
"Ah, you don't remember him ?" "No," said Clarence shortly.

He was beginning to fall back upon that certain dogged repetition which in sensitive children arises from their hopeless inability to express their deeper feelings.

He also had an instinctive consciousness that this want of a knowledge of his father was part of that vague wrong that had been done him.

It did not help his uneasiness that he could see that one of the two men, who turned away with a half-laugh, misunderstood or did not believe him.
"How did you come with the Silsbees ?" asked the first man.
Clarence repeated mechanically, with a child's distaste of practical details, how he had lived with an aunt at St.Jo, and how his stepmother had procured his passage with the Silsbees to California, where he was to meet his cousin.

All this with a lack of interest and abstraction that he was miserably conscious told against him, but he was yet helpless to resist.
The first man remained thoughtful, and then glanced at Clarence's sunburnt hands.