looked charmingly fresh, youthful, and pretty; and yet the unfortunate
woman thought that her attitude and expression at that moment suggested
more than her fifteen years of girlhood. Her golden hair still hung
unfettered over her straight, boy-like back and shoulders; her short
skirt still showed her childish feet and ankles; yet there seemed to be
some undefined maturity or a vague womanliness about her that stung Mrs.
Peyton's heart. The child was growing away from her, too!

"Susy!"

The young girl raised her head quickly; her deep violet eyes seemed also
to leap with a sudden suspicion, and with a half-mechanical, secretive
movement, that might have been only a schoolgirl's instinct, her right
hand had slipped a paper on which she was scribbling between the leaves
of her book. Yet the next moment, even while looking interrogatively
at her mother, she withdrew the paper quietly, tore it up into small
pieces, and threw them on the ground.

But Mrs. Peyton was too preoccupied with her news to notice the
circumstance, and too nervous in her haste to be tactful. "Susy, your
father has invited that boy, Clarence Brant,--you know that creature
we picked up and assisted on the plains, when you were a mere baby,--to
come down here and make us a visit."

Her heart seemed to stop beating as she gazed breathlessly at the girl.
But Susy's face, unchanged except for the alert, questioning eyes,
remained fixed for a moment; then a childish smile of wonder opened her
small red mouth, expanded it slightly as she said simply:--

"Lor, mar! He hasn't, really!"