After a while the things that Peter was always drawing began to bear what might be called a family resemblance to the things they were intended to represent.  But as all children try to draw, nobody noticed that Peter Champneys tried harder than most, or that he couldn’t put his fingers on a bit of paper and a stub of pencil without trying to draw something—­a smear that vaguely resembled a tree, or a lopsided assortment of features that you presently made out to be a face.

But Peter Champneys, at a very early age, had to learn things less pleasant than drawing.  That tiny house in Riverton represented all that was left of the once-great Champneys holdings, and the little widow was hard put to it to keep even that.  Before he was seven Peter knew all those pitiful subterfuges wherewith genteel poverty tries to save its face; he had to watch his mother, who wasn’t robust, fight that bitter and losing fight which women of her sort wage with evil circumstances.  Peter wore shoes only from the middle of November to the first of March; his clothes were presentable only because his mother had a genius for making things over.  He wasn’t really hungry, for nobody can starve in a small town in South Carolina; folks are too kindly, too neighborly, too generous, for anything like that to happen.  They have a tactful fashion of coming over with a plate of hot biscuit or a big bowl of steaming okra-and-tomato soup.

Often a bowl of that soup fetched in by a thoughtful neighbor, or an apronful of sweet potatoes Emma Campbell brought with her when she did the washing, kept Peter’s backbone and wishbone from rubbing noses.  But there were rainy days when neighbors didn’t send in anything, Emma wasn’t washing for them that week, sewing was scanty, or taxes on the small holding had to be paid; and then Peter Champneys learned what an insatiable Shylock the human stomach can be.  He learned what it means not to have enough warm covers on cold nights, nor warm clothes enough on cold days.  He accepted it all without protest, or even wonder.  These things were so because they were so.

On such occasions his mother drew him closer to her and comforted him after the immemorial South Carolina fashion, with accounts of the former greatness, glory, and grandeur of the Champneys family; always finishing with the solemn admonition that, no matter what happened, Peter must never, never forget Who He Was.  Peter, who was a literal child in his way, inferred from these accounts that when the South Carolina Champneyses used to light up their big house for a party, before the war, the folks in North Carolina could see to read print by the reflection in the sky, and the people over in Georgia thought they were witnessing the Aurora Borealis.