Peter stood regarding her curiously and at the same time sympathetically.
“Where do you want to go, Cissie?”
The girl drew a long breath; her bosom lifted and dropped abruptly.
“I don't know; that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about.”
“You don't know where you want to go?” He smiled faintly. “How do you know you want to go at all?”
“Oh, Peter, all I know is I must leave Hooker's Bend!” She gave a little shiver. “I'm tired of it, sick of it—sick.” She exhaled a breath, as if she were indeed physically ill. Her face suggested it; her eyes were shadowed. “Some Northern city, I suppose,” she added.
“And you want me to help you?” inquired Peter, puzzled.
She nodded silently, with a woman's instinct to make a man guess the favor she is seeking.
Then it occurred to Peter just what sort of assistance the girl did want. It gave him a faint shock that a girl could come to a man to beg or to borrow money. It was a white man's shock, a notion he had picked up in Boston, because it happens frequently among village negroes, and among them it holds as little significance as children begging one another for bites of apples.
Peter thought over his bank balance, then started
