“Why, I don’t suppose niggers ever will be honest,” admitted the grocer, very frankly.  “You naturally don’t trust a nigger.  If you credit one for a dime, the next time he has any money he’ll go trade somewhere else.”  The grocer broke into his contagious laugh.  “Do you know how I’ve built up my business here, Peter?  By never trusting a nigger.”  Mr. Killibrew continued his pleased chuckle.  “Yes, I get the whole cash trade of the niggers in Hooker’s Bend by never cheating one and never trusting one.”

The grocer leaned back in his squeaking chair and looked out through the glass partition, over the brightly colored packages that lined his shelves from floor to ceiling.  All that prosperity had come about through a policy of honesty and distrust.  It was something to be proud of.

“Now, let me see,” he proceeded, recurring pleasantly to what he recalled of Peter’s original proposition:  “Aunt Becky sent you here to tell me if I’d raise her pay, she’d stop stealin’ and—­and raise some honest children.”  Mr. Killibrew threw back his head broke into loud, jelly-like laughter.  “Why, don’t you know, Peter, she’s an old liar.  If I gave her a hundred a week, she’d steal.  And children!  Why, the old humbug!  She’s too old; she’s had her crop.  And, besides all that, I don’t mind what the old woman takes.  It isn’t much.  She’s a good old darky, faithful as a dog.”  He arose from his swivel-chair briskly and floated Peter out before him.  “Tell her, if she wants a raise,” he concluded heartily, “and can’t pinch enough out of my kitchen and the two dollars I pay her—­tell her to come to me, straight out, and I’ll give her more, and she can pinch more.”

Mr. Killibrew moved down the aisle of his store between fragrant barrels and boxes, laughing mellowly at old Aunt Becky’s ruse, as he saw it.  As he turned Peter out, he invited him to come again when he needed anything in the grocery line.

And he was so pleasant, hearty, and sincere in his friendliness toward both Peter and old Aunt Becky that Peter, even amid the complete side-tracking and derailing of his mission, decided that it ever he did have occasion to purchase any groceries, he would do his trading at this market ruled by an absolute honesty with, and a complete distrust in, his race.

At the conclusion of the Killibrew interview Peter instinctively felt that he had just about touched the norm of Hooker’s Bend.  The village might contain men who would dive a little deeper into the race question with Peter; assuredly, there would be hundreds who would not dive so deep.  Mr. Killibrew’s attitude on the race question turned on how to hold the negro patronage of the village to his grocery.  It was not an abstract question at all, but a concrete fact, which he had worked out to his own satisfaction.  With Mr. Killibrew, with all Hooker’s Bend, there was no negro question.

CHAPTER XVII