The girl had a certain finical precision to her English that told Peter she had been away to some school, and had been taught to guard her grammar very carefully as she talked. Peter helped her inside amid the handshake and said he would go fetch the list. As he turned, Cissie offered her bundle. "Here is something I thought might be a little treat for you and Ahnt Carolin'." She paused, and then explained remotely, "Sometimes it is hard to get good things at the village market." Peter took the package, vaguely amused at Cissie's patronage of the Hooker's Bend market. It was an attitude instinctively assumed by every girl, white or black, who leaves the village and returns. The bundle was rather large and wrapped in newspapers. He carried it into the kitchen to his mother, and then returned with the list. The sheet was greasy from the handling of black fingers. The girl spread it on the little center-table with a certain daintiness, seated herself, and held out her hand for Peter's pencil. She made rather a graceful study in cream and yellow as she leaned over the table and signed her name in a handwriting as perfect and as devoid of character as a copy- book. She began discussing the speech Peter had made at the Benevolence Hall. "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."