“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 like that, Cissie.  More of us go off to school every year.  I do hope my school here in Hooker’s Bend will be of some real value.  If I could just show our people how badly we fare here, how ill housed, and unsanitary—­”

The girl pressed Peter’s fingers with a woman’s optimism for a man.

“You’ll succeed, Peter, I know you will.  Some day the name Siner will mean the same thing to coloured people as Tanner and Dunbar and Braithwaite do.  Anyway, I’ve put my name down for ten dollars to help out.”  She returned the pencil.  “I’ll have Tump Pack come around and pay you my subscription, Peter.”

“I’ll watch out for Tump,” promised Peter in a lightening mood, “—­and make him pay.”

“He’ll do it.”

“I don’t doubt it.  You ought to have him under perfect control.  I meant to tell you what a pretty frock you have on.”

The girl dimpled, and dropped him a little curtsy, half ironical and wholly graceful.

Peter was charmed.

“Now keep that way, Cissie, smiling and human, not so grammatical.  I wish I had a brooch.”

“A brooch?”

“I’d give it to you.  Your dress needs a brooch, an old gold brooch at the bosom, just a glint there to balance your eyes.”

Cissie flushed happily, and made the feminine movement of concealing the V-shaped opening at her throat.

“It’s a pleasure to doll up for a man like you, Peter.  You see a girl’s good points—­if she has any,” she tacked on demurely.

“Oh, just any man—­”

“Don’t think it!  Don’t think it!” waved down Cissie, humorously.

“But, Cissie, how is it possible—­”

“Just blind.”  Cissie rippled into a boarding-school laugh.  “I could wear the whole rue del Opera here in Niggertown, and nobody would ever see it but you.”

Cissie was moving toward the door.  Peter tried to detain her.  He enjoyed the implication of Tump Pack’s stupidity, in their badinage, but she would not stay.  He was finally reduced to thanking her for her present, then stood guard as she tripped out into the grimy street.  In the sunshine her glossy black hair and canary dress looked as trim and brilliant as the plumage of a chaffinch.