o tell me!"

"Very much," said Clarence.

"And isn't this frock pretty--it's only my second best--but I've a
prettier one with lace all down in front; but isn't this one pretty,
Clarence, tell me?"

Clarence thought the frock and its fair owner perfection, and said
so. Whereat Susy, as if suddenly aware of the presence of passers-by,
assumed an air of severe propriety, dropped her hands by her side, and
with an affected conscientiousness walked on, a little further from
Clarence's side, until they reached the ice-cream saloon.

"Get a table near the back, Clarence," she said, in a confidential
whisper, "where they can't see us--and strawberry, you know, for the
lemon and vanilla here are just horrid!"

They took their seats in a kind of rustic arbor in the rear of the shop,
which gave them the appearance of two youthful but somewhat over-dressed
and over-conscious shepherds. 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. Like all
children, her strongest impressions were the most recent. In the vain
hope to lead her back to this material yesterday, he said--

"You remember Jim Hooker?"

"Oh, HE ran away, when you left. But just think of it! The other day,
when papa and I went into a big restaurant in San Francisco, who should
be there WAITING on the table--yes, Clarence, a real wa