“Your mother certainly hates me, Peter.”

“No,” said Peter, trying to soften the situation; “it’s me; she’s terribly hurt about—­” he nodded to-ward the white section—­“that business.”

Cissie opened her clear brown eyes.

“Your own mother turned against you!”

“Oh, she has a right to be,” began Peter, defensively.  “I ought to have read that deed.  It’s amazing I didn’t, but I—­I really wasn’t expecting a trick, Mr. Hooker seemed so—­so sympathetic—­” He came to a lame halt, staring at the dust through which they picked their way.

“Of course you weren’t expecting tricks!” cried Cissie, warmly.  “The whole thing shows you’re a gentleman used to dealing with gentlemen.  But of course these Hooker’s Bend negroes will never see that!”

Peter, surprised and grateful, looked at Cissie.  Her construction of the swindle was more flattering than any apology he had been able to frame for himself.

“Still, Cissie, I ought to have used the greatest care—­”

“I’m not talking about what you ‘ought,’” stated the octoroon, crisply; “I’m talking about what you are.  When it comes to ‘ought,’ we colored people must get what we can, any way we can.  We fight from the bottom.”  The speech held a viperish quality which for a moment caught the brown man’s attention; then he said: 

“One thing is sure, I’ve lost my prestige, whatever it was worth.”

The girl nodded slowly.

“With the others you have, I suppose.”

Peter glanced at Cissie.  The temptation was strong to give the conversation a personal turn, but he continued on the general topic: 

“Well, perhaps it’s just as well.  My prestige was a bit too flamboyant, Cissie.  All I had to do was to mention a plan.  The Sons and Daughters didn’t even discuss it.  They put it right through.  That wasn’t healthy.  Our whole system of society, all democracies are based on discussion.  Our old Witenagemot—­”

“But it wasn’t our old Witenagemot,” said the girl.

“Well—­no,” admitted the mulatto, “that’s true.”

They moved along for some distance in silence, when the girl asked: 

“What are you going to do now, Peter?”

“Teach, and keep working for that training-school,” stated Peter, almost belligerently.  “You didn’t expect a little thing like a hundred dollars to stop me, did you?”

“No-o-o,” conceded Cissie, with some reserve of judgment in her tone.  Presently she added, “You could do a lot better up North, Peter.”

“For whom?”

“Why, yourself,” said the girl, a little surprised.

Siner nodded.