"I never saw any white men marched in, either."
"Oh, hell! I wish I was in college."
"What are you sitting out here thinking about?" inquired Peter of the ingenuous youngster.
"Oh—football and—women and God and—how to stack cards. You think about ever'thing, in the woods. Damn it! I got to git out o' this little jay town. D' reckon I could git in the navy, Siner?"
"Don't see why you couldn't, Sam. Have you seen Tump Pack anywhere?"
"Yeah; on Hobbett's corner. Say, is Cissie Dildine at home?"
"I believe she is."
"She cooks for us," explained young Arkwright, "and Mammy wants her to come and git supper, too."
The phrase "get supper, too," referred to the custom in the white homes of Hooker's Bend of having only two meals cooked a day, breakfast and the twelve-o'clock dinner, with a hot supper optional with the mistress.
Peter nodded, and passed on up the path, leaving young Arkwright seated on the ledge of rock, a prey to all the boiling, erratic impulses of adolescence. The negro sensed some of the innumerable difficulties of this white boy's life, and once, as he walked on over the silent needles, he felt an impulse to turn back and talk to young Sam Arkwright, to sit down and try to explain to the youth what he could of this hazardous adventure called Life. But then, he reflected, very likely the boy would be offended at a serious talk from a negro. Also, he thought that young Arkwright, being white, was really not within the sphere of his ministry. He, Peter Siner, was a worker in the black world of the South. He was part of the black world which the white South was so meticulous to hide away, to keep out of sight and out of thought.