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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.