"
The old negress became very still. She was not looking quite at her son,
or yet precisely away from him.
"Uh--uh noble nigger,"--she gave her abdominal chuckle. "Why--yeah, I
reckon yo' father wuz putty noble as--as niggers go." She sat looking at
her son, oddly, with a faint amusement in her gross black face, when a
careful voice, a very careful voice, sounded in the outer room, gliding
up politely on the syllables:
"Ahnt Carolin'! oh, Ahnt Carolin', may I enter?"
The old woman stirred.
"Da''s Cissie, Peter. Go ast her in to de fambly-room."
When Siner opened the door, the vague resemblance of the slender, creamy
girl on the threshold to Ida May again struck him; but Cissie Dildine
was younger, and her polished black hair lay straight on her pretty
head, and was done in big, shining puffs over her ears in a way that Ida
May's unruly curls would never have permitted. Her eyes were the most
limpid brown Peter had ever seen, but her oval face was faintly
unnatural from the use of negro face powder, which colored women insist
on, and which gives their yellows and browns a barely perceptible
greenish hue.
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