Village books

"Don' reckon nobody could git a deed off on you wid stoppers in it, does
you?"
"We don't know any such word as 'stop,' Tump," declared Peter, gaily.
For Peter was gay. The whole incident at the bank was beginning to
please him. The meeting of a sudden difficulty, his quick decision--it
held the quality of leadership. Napoleon had it.
The two colored men stepped briskly through the afternoon sunshine along
the mean village street. Here and there in front of their doorways sat
the merchants yawning and talking, or watching pigs root in the piles of
waste.
In Peter's heart came a wonderful thought. He would make his industrial
institution such a model of neatness that the whole village of Hooker's
Bend would catch the spirit. The white people should see that something
clean and uplifting could come out of Niggertown. The two races ought to
live for a mutual benefit. It was a fine, generous thought. For some
reason, just then, there flickered through Peter's mind a picture of the
Arkwright boy sitting hunched over in the cedar glade, staring at the
needles.


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