Page:Birthright.djvu/122

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BIRTHRIGHT

lips to his when he pleased. After all, there is no way for a man to rest without a woman. All he can do is to stop work.

For a long time they sat transported amid the dusty honeysuckles and withered blooms, but after a while they began talking a little at a time of the future, their future. They felt so indissolubly joined that they could not imagine the future finding them apart. There was no need for any more trouble with Tump Pack. They would marry quietly, and go away North to live. Peter thought of his friend Farquhar. He wondered if Farquhar's attitude would be just the same toward Cissie as it was toward him.

“North,” was the burden of the octoroon's dreams. They would go North to Chicago. There were two hundred and fifty thousand negroes in Chicago, a city within itself three times the size of Nashville. Up North she and Peter could go to theaters, art galleries, could enter any church, could ride in street-cars, railroad-trains, could sleep and eat at any hotel, live authentic lives.

It was Cissie planning her emancipation, planning to escape her lifelong disabilities.

“Oh, I'll be so glad! so glad! so glad!” she sobbed, and drew Peter's head passionately down to her deep bosom.