Peter Siner walked back into the kitchen with the fixed smile of a man who is thinking of a pretty girl.  The black dowager in the kitchen received him in silence, with her thick lips pouted.  When Peter observed it, he felt slightly amused at his mother’s resentment.

“Well, you sho had a lot o’ chatter over signin’ a lil ole paper.”

“She signed for ten dollars,” said Peter, smiling.

“Huh! she’ll never pay it.”

“Said Tump Pack would pay it.”

“Huh!” The old negress dropped the subject, and nodded at a huge double pan on the table.  “Dat’s whut she brung you.”  She grunted disapprovingly.

“And it’s for you, too, Mother.”

“Ya-as, I ’magine she brung somp’n fuh me.”

Peter walked across to the double pans, and saw they held a complete dinner—­chicken, hot biscuits, cake, pickle, even ice-cream.

The sight of the food brought Peter a realization that he was keenly hungry.  As a matter of fact, he had not eaten a palatable meal since he had been evicted from the white dining-car at Cairo, Illinois.  Siner served his own and his mother’s plate.

The old woman sniffed again.

“Seems to me lak you is mighty onobsarvin’ fuh a nigger whut’s been off to college.”

“Anything else?” Peter looked into the pans again.

“Ain’t you see whut it’s all in?”

“What it’s in?”

“Yeah; whut it’s in.  You heared whut I said.”

“What is it in?”

“Why, it’s in Miss Arkwright’s tukky roaster, dat’s whut it’s in.”  The old negress drove her point home with an acid accent.

Peter Siner was too loyal to his new friendship with Cissie Dildine to allow his mother’s jealous suspicions to affect him; nevertheless the old woman’s observations about the turkey roaster did prevent a complete and care-free enjoyment of the meal.  Certainly there were other turkey roasters in Hooker’s Bend than Mrs. Arkwright’s.  Cissie might very well own a roaster.  It was absurd to think that Cissie, in the midst of her almost pathetic struggle to break away from the uncouthness of Niggertown, would stoop to—­Even in his thoughts Peter avoided nominating the charge.

And then, somehow, his memory fished up the fact that years ago Ida May, according to village rumor, was “light-fingered.”  At that time in Peter’s life “light-fingeredness” carried with it no opprobrium whatever.  It was simply a fact about Ida May, as were her sloe eyes and curling black hair.  His reflections renewed his perpetual sense of queerness and strangeness that hall-marked every phase of Niggertown life since his return from the North.

* * * * *

Cissie Dildine’s contribution tailed out the one hundred dollars that Peter needed, and after he had finished his meal, the mulatto set out across the Big Hill for the white section of the village, to complete his trade.