hievings came over
Peter with a rising grimness. And there was no public sentiment against
such practice. It was accepted everywhere as natural and inevitable. The
negresses were never prosecuted; no effort was made to regain the stolen
goods. The employers realized that what they paid would not keep soul
and body together; that it was steal or perish.

It was a fantastic truth that for any colored girl to hire into domestic
service in Hooker's Bend was more or less entering an apprenticeship in
peculation. What she could steal was the major portion of her wage, if
two such anomalous terms may be used in conjunction.

Yet, strange to say, the negro women of the village were quite honest in
other matters. They paid their small debts. They took their mistresses'
pocket-books to market and brought back the correct change. And if a
mistress grew too indignant about something they had stolen, they would
bring it back and say: "Here is a new one. I'd rather buy you a new one
than have you think I would take anything."

The whole system was the lees of slavery, and was surely the most
demoralizing, the most grotesque method of hiring service in the whole
civilized world. It was so absurd that its mere relation lapses into
humor, that bane of black folk.

Such painful thoughts filled the gloomy library and harassed Peter in
his copying. He took his work to the window and tried to concentrate
upon it, but his mind kept playing away.

Indeed, it seemed to Peter that to sit in this old room and rewrite the
wordy meanderings of the old gentleman's book was the very height of
emptiness. How utterly futile, when all around him, on every hand, girls
like Cissie Dildine were being indentured to corruption! And, as far as
Peter knew, he was the only person in the South who saw it or felt it or
cared anything at all about it.

When Cissie Dildine came to the surface of Peter's mind she remained
there, whirling around and around in his chaotic thoughts. He began
talking to her image, after a certain dramatic trick of his mind, and
she began offering her environment as an excuse for what had come
between them and estranged them. She stole, but she had been trained to
steal. She was a thief, the victim of an immense immorality. The charm
of Cissie, her queer, swift-working intuition, the candor of her
confession, her voluptuousness--all came rushing down on Peter,
harassing him with anger and love and desire. To copy any more script