"Uh huh."
"Why, what makes you think I'm going to do anything with Cissie?"
"M-m, visitin' roun'." The fool flung his face into a grimace, and dropped it as one might shake out a sack.
Peter watched the contortion uneasily.
"What do you mean—visiting around?"
"Diff'nt folks go visitin' roun';
Some goes up an' some goes down."
Apparently Jim Pink had merely quoted a few words from a poem he knew. He stared at the green-black depth of the glade, which set in about half-way up the hill they were climbing.
"Ef this weather don' ever break," he observed sagely, "we sho am in fuh a dry spell."
Peter did not pursue the topic of the weather. He climbed the hill in silence, wondering just what the buffoon meant. He suspected he was hinting at Cissie's visit to his room. However, he did not dare ask any questions or press the point in any manner, lest he commit himself.
The minstrel had succeeded in making Peter's walk very uncomfortable, as somehow he always did. Peter went on thinking about the matter. If Jim Pink knew of Cissie's visit, all Niggertown knew it. No woman's reputation, nobody's shame or misery or even life, would stand between Jim Pink and what he considered a joke. The buffoon was the crudest thing in this world—a man who thought himself a wit.