"Kla'uns," said Susy, shaking her head and fixing her round blue eyes
with calm mendacity on the boy, "don't you tell me. I WAS THERE!"

Clarence started back, and nearly fell over the wagon in hopeless dismay
at this dreadful revelation of Susy's powers of exaggeration. "But," he
gasped, "you know, Susy, you and me left before--"

"Kla'uns," said Susy calmly, making a little pleat in the skirt of her
dress with her small thumb and fingers, "don't you talk to me. I was
there. I'se a SERIVER! The men at the fort said so! The SERIVERS is
allus, allus there, and allus allus knows everythin'."

Clarence was too dumfounded to reply. He had a vague recollection
of having noticed before that Susy was very much fascinated by the
reputation given to her at Fort Ridge as a "survivor," and was trying
in an infantile way to live up to it. This the wicked Jim had evidently
encouraged. For a day or two Clarence felt a little afraid of her, and
more lonely than ever.

It was in this state, and while he was doggedly conscious that his
association with Jim did not prepossess Mrs. Peyton or her brother in
his favor, and that the former even believed him responsible for Susy's
unhallowed acquaintance with Jim, that he drifted into one of those
youthful escapades on which elders are apt to sit in severe but not
always considerate judgment. Believing, like many other children, that
nobody cared particularly for him, except to RESTRAIN him, discovering,
as children do, much sooner than we complacently imagine, that love and
preference have no logical connection with desert or character, Clarence
became boyishly reckless. But when, one day, it was rumored that a herd