put out a slender hand to Peter.

"This is Cissie Dildine, Mister Siner." She smiled up at him. "I just
came over to put my name down on your list. There was such a mob at the
Benevolence Hall last night I couldn't get to you."

The girl had a certain finical precision to her English that told Peter
she had been away to some school, and had been taught to guard her
grammar very carefully as she talked.

Peter helped her inside amid the handshake and said he would go fetch
the list. As he turned, Cissie offered her bundle. "Here is something I
thought might be a little treat for you and Ahnt Carolin'." She paused,
and then explained remotely, "Sometimes it is hard to get good things at
the village market."

Peter took the package, vaguely amused at Cissie's patronage of the
Hooker's Bend market. It was an attitude instinctively assumed by every
girl, white or black, who leaves the village and returns. The bundle was
rather large and wrapped in newspapers. He carried it into the kitchen
to his mother, and then returned with the list.

The sheet was greasy from the handling of black fingers. The girl spread
it on the little center-table with a certain daintiness, seated herself,
and held out her hand for Peter's pencil. She made rather a graceful
study in cream and yellow as she leaned over the table and signed her
name in a handwriting as perfect and as devoid of character as a copy-
book. She began discussing the speech Peter had made at the Benevolence
Hall.

"I don't know whether I am in favor of your project or not, Mr. Siner,"
she said as she rose from the table.

"No?" Peter was surprised and amused at her attitude and at her precise
voice.

"No, I'm rather inclined toward Mr. DuBois's theory of a literary
culture than toward Mr. Washington's for a purely industrial training."

Peter broke out laughing.

"For the love of Mike, Cissie, you talk like the instructor in Sociology
B! And haven't we met before somewhere? This 'Mister Siner' stuff--"

The girl's face warmed under its faint, greenish powder.

"If I aren't careful with my language, Peter," she said simply, "I'll be
talking just as badly as I did before I went to the seminary. You know I
never hear a proper sentence in Hooker's Bend except my own."

A certain resignation in the girl's soft voice brought Peter a qualm for
laughing at her. He laid an impulsive hand on her young shoulder.

"Well, that's true, certainly, but it won't always be lik