"Peter, it's hard to be nice in Niggertown. I--I just happened to think
how folks would gossip--you coming here as soon as Tump was arrested."

"Perhaps I'd better go," suggested Peter, uncomfortably.

Cissie reached up and caught his lapel.

"Oh, no, don't feel that way! I'm glad you came, really. Here, let's go
through this way to the arbor. It isn't a bad place to sit."

She led the way silently through two dark rooms. Before she opened the
back door, Peter could hear Cissie's mother and a younger sister moving
around the outside of the house to give up the arbor to Cissie and her
company.

The arbor proved a trellis of honeysuckle over the back door, with a
bench under it. A film of dust lay over the dense foliage, and a few
withered blooms pricked its grayish green. The earthen floor of the
arbor was beaten hard and bare by the naked feet of children.

Cissie sat down on the bench and indicated a place beside her.

"I've been so uneasy about you! I've been wondering what on earth you
could do about it."

"It's a snarl, all right," he said, and almost immediately began
discussing the peculiar _impasse_ in which his difficulty with Tump
had landed him. Cissie sat listening with a serious, almost tragic face,
giving a little nod now and then. Once she remarked in her precise way: