It was true that it was somewhat impractically mixed with his visions of Mrs.Peyton and Susy, and even included his previous scheme of relief for the improvident and incorrigible Hooker.

But it gave a wonderful sincerity and happiness to his slumbers that night, which the wiser and elder Peyton might have envied, and I wot not was in the long run as correct and sagacious as Peyton's sleepless cogitations.

And in the early morning Mr.Clarence Brant, the young capitalist, sat down to his traveling-desk and wrote two clear-headed, logical, and practical business letters,--one to his banker, and the other to his former guardian, Don Juan Robinson, as his first step in a resolve that was, nevertheless, perhaps as wildly quixotic and enthusiastic as any dream his boyish and unselfish heart had ever indulged.
At breakfast, in the charmed freedom of the domestic circle, Clarence forgot Susy's capricious commands of yesterday, and began to address himself to her in his old earnest fashion, until he was warned by a significant knitting of the young lady's brows and monosyllabic responses.

But in his youthful loyalty to Mrs.Peyton, he was more pained to notice Susy's occasional unconscious indifference to her adopted mother's affectionate expression, and a more conscious disregard of her wishes.

So uneasy did he become, in his sensitive concern for Mrs.Peyton's half-concealed mortification, that he gladly accepted Peyton's offer to go with him to visit the farm and corral.