He, however, said he thought it was a large house.

Yet the modest answer only made his new friend look at him the more keenly.
"Your father was Colonel Hamilton Brant, of Louisville, wasn't he ?" he said, half-confidentially.
"Yes," said Clarence hopelessly.
"Well," said his friend cheerfully, as if dismissing an abstruse problem from his mind, "Let's go to supper." When they reached the tent again, Clarence noticed that the supper was laid only for his host and wife and the second man--who was familiarly called "Harry," but who spoke of the former always as "Mr.and Mrs.
Peyton"-- while the remainder of the party, a dozen men, were at a second camp fire, and evidently enjoying themselves in a picturesque fashion.
Had the boy been allowed to choose, he would have joined them, partly because it seemed more "manly," and partly that he dreaded a renewal of the questioning.
But here, Susy, sitting bolt upright on an extemporized high stool, happily diverted his attention by pointing to the empty chair beside her.
"Kla'uns," she said suddenly, with her usual clear and appalling frankness, "they is chickens, and hamanaigs, and hot biksquits, and lasses, and Mister Peyton says I kin have 'em all." Clarence, who had begun suddenly to feel that he was responsible for Susy's deportment and was balefully conscious that she was holding her plated fork in her chubby fist by its middle, and, from his previous knowledge of her, was likely at any moment to plunge it into the dish before her, said softly,-- "Hush!" "Yes, you shall, dear," said Mrs.Peyton, with tenderly beaming assurance to Susy and a half-reproachful glance at the boy.

"Eat what you like, darling." "It's a fork," whispered the still uneasy Clarence, as Susy now seemed inclined to stir her bowl of milk with it.
"'Tain't, now, Kla'uns, it's only a split spoon," said Susy.
But Mrs.Peyton, in her rapt admiration, took small note of these irregularities, plying the child with food, forgetting her own meal, and only stopping at times to lift back the forward straying curls on Susy's shoulders.

Mr.Peyton looked on gravely and contentedly.

Suddenly the eyes of husband and wife met.
"She'd have been nearly as old as this, John," said Mrs.Peyton, in a faint voice.
John Peyton nodded without speaking, and turned his eyes away into the gathering darkness.