tails of
Caroline's face.

"But, Mother--" he began defensively, "I--"

"Me sweatin' over de wash-pot," the negress went on, "so's you could go
up North an' learn a lil sense; heah you comes back chasin' a dutty
slut!"

"But, Mother," he begged thickly, "I was simply walking home with Miss
Dildine."

"Miss Dildine! Miss Dildine!" exploded the ponderous woman, with an
erasing gesture. "Ef you means dat stuck-up fly-by-night Cissie Dildine,
say so, and don' stan' thaiuh mouthin', 'Miss Dildine, Miss Dildine'!"

"Mother," asked Peter, thickly, through his swelling mouth, "do you want
to know what did happen?"

"I knows. I tol' you to keep away fum dat hussy. She's a fool 'bout her
bright color an' straight hair. Needn't be givin' herse'f no airs!"

Peter stood in the doorway, steadying himself by the jamb. The world
still swayed from the blows he had received on the head.

"What girl would you be willing for me to go with?" he asked in faint
satire.

"Heah in Niggertown?"

Peter nodded. The movement increased his headache.

"None a-tall. No Niggertown wench a-tall. When you mus' ma'y, I's
'speckin' you to go off summuhs an' pick yo' gal, lak you went off to
pick yo' aidjucation." She swung out a thick arm, and looked at Peter
out of the corner of her eyes, her head tilted to one side, as negresses
do when they become dramatically serious.

Peter left his mother to her stare and went to his own room. This
constant implication among Niggertown inhabitants that Niggertown and
all it held was worthless, mean, unhuman depressed Peter. The mulatto
knew the real trouble with Niggertown was it had adopted the white
village's estimate of it. The sentiment of the white village was
overpowering among the imitative negroes. The black folk looked into the
eyes of the whites and saw themselves reflected as chaff and skum and
slime, and no human being ever suggested that they were aught else.

Peter's room was a rough shed papered with old newspapers. All sorts of
yellow scare-heads streaked his walls. Hanging up was a crayon
enlargement of his mother, her broad face as unwrinkled as an egg and
drawn almost white, for the picture agents have discovered the only way
to please their black patrons is to make their enlargements as nearly
white as possible.

In one corner, on a home-made book-rack, stood Peter's library,--a Greek
book or two, an old calculus, a sociology, a psychology, a philosophy,
and a score of other vol