"I want you to help me go away."
Peter looked at her in surprise. He hardly knew what he had been expecting, but it was not this.
Some repressed emotion crept into the girl's voice.
"Peter, I—I can't stay here in Hooker's Bend any longer. I want to go away. I—I've got to go away."
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.