was younger, and her polished black hair lay straight on her pretty
head, and was done in big, shining puffs over her ears in a way that Ida
May's unruly curls would never have permitted. Her eyes were the most
limpid brown Peter had ever seen, but her oval face was faintly
unnatural from the use of negro face powder, which colored women insist
on, and which gives their yellows and browns a barely perceptible
greenish hue. Cissie wore a fluffy yellow dress some three shades deeper
than the throat and the glimpse of bosom revealed at the neck.

The girl carried a big package in her arms, and now she manipulated this
to put out a slender hand to Peter.

"This is Cissie Dildine, Mister Siner." She smiled up at him. "I just
came over to put my name down on your list. There was such a mob at the
Benevolence Hall last night I couldn't get to you."

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