From the first moment in school that he saw Pansetta, he knew that he liked her, and he would sit looking at her for hours in every class that they had together—for she was a little baby-doll kind of girl, with big black eyes and a smooth pinkish-brown skin, and her hair was curly on top of her head. Her widowed mother was a cook at the Goucher College dining-hall; and she was an all-alone little girl, for Pansetta had no brothers or sisters. After Thanksgiving Sandy began to walk part of the way home with her every day. He could not accompany her all the way because he had to go to work at Mr. Prentiss’s shop. But on Christmas he bought her a box of candy—and sent it to her by mail. And at Easter-time she gave him a chocolate egg.

“Unh-huh! You got a girl now, ain’t you?” teased Buster one April afternoon when he caught Sandy standing in front of the high school waiting for Pansetta to come out.

“Aw, go chase yourself!” said Sandy, for Buster had a way of talking dirty about girls, and Sandy was afraid he would begin that with Pansetta; but today his friend changed the subject instead.

“Say come on round to the pool hall tonight and I’ll teach you to play billiards.”

“Don’t think I’d better, Bus. Aunt Tempy might get sore,” Sandy replied, shaking his head. “Besides, I have to study.”

“Are you gonna read yourself to death?” Buster demanded indignantly. “You’ve got to come out some time, man! Tell her you’re going to the movies and we’ll go down to Cudge’s instead.”

Sandy thought for a moment.

“All the boys come round there at night.”

“Well, I might.”

“Little apron-string boy!” teased Buster.

“If I hit you a couple of times, you’ll find out I’m not!” Sandy doubled up his fists in pretended anger. “I’ll black your blue eyes for you!”

“Ya-a-a-a!” yelled his friend, running up the street. “See you tonight at Cudge’s—apron-string boy!”

And that evening Sandy didn’t finish reading, as he had planned, Moby Dick, which Mr. Prentiss’s daughter had lent him. Instead he practised handling a cue-stick under the tutelage of Buster.

XXV. POOL HALL

There were no community houses in Stanton and no recreation centres for young men except the Y.M.C.A., which was closed to you if you were not a white boy; so, for the Negro youths of the town, Cudge Windsor’s pool hall was the evening meeting-place. There one could play billiards, shoot dice in a back room, or sit in summer on the two long benches outside, talking and looking at the girls as they passed. In good weather these benches were crowded all the time.

Next door to the pool hall was Cudge Windsor’s lunch-room. Of course, the best colored people did not patronize Cudge’s, even though his business was not in the Bottoms. It was located on Pearl Street, some three or four blocks before that thoroughfare plunged across the tracks into the low terrain of tinkling pianos and ladies who loved for cash. But since Cudge catered to what Mr. Siles called “the common element,” the best people stayed away.