Darrell frets that the furniture ordered for his family’s San Diego home is too expensive, though Clarence assures him that it is within budget. Clarence discusses his upcoming trip to Alameda to retrieve the rest of his family with Victoriano, with whom he has become close friends. Victoriano teases Mercedes over her clear affection for Clarence, which makes Clarence happy. Clarence agrees to help Mercedes’s friends, the Holman sisters, on their trip to San Diego.

Clarence has lunch with his broker, Hubert Haverly, who laments that Clarence sold his stock too early; he earned half a million dollars when he could have earned a million. They plot how to most cautiously invest his fortune, which he earned by careful speculation with an inheritance of $2,000. Hubert plans to investigate options and will report when Clarence returns from Alameda.

Clarence escorts his mother, siblings, and the Holman sisters on the steamship from Alameda back to San Diego. On the ship, they meet Peter Roper, a lawyer, whose coarseness Clarence dislikes. Roper elicits an introduction between his wife and Mrs. Darrell, as he wishes to grow close to Darrell for business, though he lies and says he and Darrell already know one another as an excuse for this introduction.