Page:Birthright.djvu/93

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
BIRTHRIGHT
71

to give the conversation a personal turn, but he continued on the general topic:

“Well, perhaps it's just as well. My prestige was a bit too flamboyant, Cissie. All I had to do was to mention a plan. The Sons and Daughters didn't even discuss it. They put it right through. That wasn't healthy. Our whole system of society, all democracies are based on discussion. Our old Witenagemot—”

“But it wasn't our old Witenagemot,” said the girl.

“Well—no,” admitted the mulatto, “that's true.”

They moved along for some distance in silence, when the girl asked:

“What are you going to do now, Peter?”

“Teach, and keep working for that training-school,” stated Peter, almost belligerently. “You didn't expect a little thing like a hundred dollars to stop me, did you?”

“No-o-o,” conceded Cissie, with some reserve of judgment in her tone. Presently she added, “You could do a lot better up North, Peter.”

“For whom?”

“Why, yourself,” said the girl, a little surprised.

Siner nodded.

“I thought all that out before I came back here, Cissie. A friend of mine named Farquhar offered me a place with him up in Chicago,—a string of garages. You'd like Farquhar, Cissie. He's a materialist with an absolutely inexorable brain. He mechanizes the universe. I told him I couldn't take his offer. ‘It's