iter--but Jim
Hooker! Papa spoke to him; but of course," with a slight elevation of
her pretty chin, "I couldn't, you know; fancy--a waiter!"

The story of how Jim Hooker had personated him stopped short upon
Clarence's lips. He could not bring himself now to add that revelation
to the contempt of his small companion, which, in spite of its naivete,
somewhat grated on his sensibilities.

"Clarence," she said, suddenly turning towards him mysteriously, and
indicating the shopman and his assistants, "I really believe these
people suspect us."

"Of what?" said the practical Clarence.

"Don't be silly! Don't you see how they are staring?"

Clarence was really unable to detect the least curiosity on the part of
the shopman, or that any one exhibited the slightest concern in him or
his companion. But he felt a return of the embarrassed pleasure he was
conscious of a moment before.

"Then you're living with your father?" said Susy, changing the subject.

"You mean my COUSIN," said Clarence, smiling. "You know my father died
long before I ever knew you."

"Yes; that's what YOU used to say, Clarence, but papa says it isn't
so." But seeing the boy's wondering eyes fixed on her with a troubled
expression, she added quickly, "Oh, then, he IS your cousin!"

"Well, I think I ought to know," said Clarence, with a smile, that was,
however, far from comfortable, and a quick return of his old unpleasant
recollections of the Peytons. "Why, I was brought to him by one of his
friends." And Clarence gave a rapid boyish summary of his journey from
Sacramento, and Flynn's discovery of the letter addressed to Silsbee.
But before he had concluded he was conscious that Susy was by no means
interested in these details, nor in the least affected by the
passing allusion to her dead father and his relation to Clarence's
misadventures. With her rounded chin in her hand, she was slowly
examining his face, with a certain mischievous yet demure abstraction.
"I tell you what, Clarence," she said, when he had finished, "you
ought to make your cousin get you one of those sombreros, and a nice
gold-braided serape. They'd just suit you. And then--then you could ride
up and down the Alameda when we are going by."

"But I'm coming to see you at--at your house, and at the convent," he
said eagerly. "Father Sobriente and my cousin will fix it all right."

But Susy shook her head, with superior wisdom. "No; they must never know
our secret!--neither pa