It was Cissie planning her emancipation, planning to escape her lifelong disabilities.

“Oh, I’ll be so glad! so glad! so glad!” she sobbed, and drew Peter’s head passionately down to her deep bosom.

CHAPTER V

Peter Siner walked home from the Dildine cabin that night rather dreading to meet his mother, for it was late.  Cissie had served sandwiches and coffee on a little table in the arbor, and then had kept Peter hours afterward.  Around him still hung the glamour of Cissie’s little supper.  He could still see her rounded elbows that bent softly backward when she extended an arm, and the glimpses of her bosom when she leaned to hand him cream or sugar.  She had accomplished the whole supper in the white manner, with all poise and daintiness.  In fact, no one is more exquisitely polite than an octoroon woman when she desires to be polite, when she elevates the subserviency of her race into graciousness.

However, the pleasure and charm of Cissie were fading under the approaching abuse that Caroline was sure to pour upon the girl.  Peter dreaded it.  He walked slowly down the dark semicircle, planning how he could best break to his mother the news of his engagement.  Peter knew she would begin a long bill of complaints,—­how badly she was treated, how she had sacrificed herself, her comfort, how she had washed and scrubbed.  She would surely charge Cissie with being a thief and a drab, and all the announcements of engagements that Peter could make would never induce the old woman to soften her abuse.  Indeed, they would make her worse.

So Peter walked on slowly, smelling the haze of dust that hung in the blackness.  Out on the Big Hill, in the glade, Peter caught an occasional glimmer of light where crap-shooters and boot-leggers were beginning their nightly carousal.

These evidences of illicit trades brought Peter a thrill of disgust.  In a sort of clear moment he saw that he could not keep Cissie in such a sty as this.  He could not rear in such a place as this any children that might come to him and Cissie.  His thoughts drifted back to his mother, and his dread of her tongue.

The Siner cabin was dark and tightly shut when Peter let himself in at the gate and walked to the door.  He stood a moment listening, and then gently pressed open the shutter.  A faint light burned on the inside, a night-lamp with an old-fashioned brass bowl.  It sat on the floor, turned low, at the foot of his mother’s bed.  The mean room was mainly in shadow.  The old-style four-poster in which Caroline slept was an indistinct mound.  The air was close and foul with the bad ventilation of all negro sleeping-rooms.  The brass lamp, turned low, added smoke and gas to the tight quarters.

The odor caught Peter in the nose and throat, and once more stirred up his impatience with his mother’s disregard of hygiene.  He tiptoed into the room and decided to remove the lamp and open the high, small window to admit a little air.  He moved noiselessly and had stooped for the lamp when there came a creaking and a heavy sigh from the bed, and the old negress asked: