The girl was horrified. "What made you buy it?" she wailed. "Why, if I should take that book home I would be arrested and sent to prison."
"I am determined to see what kind of a book it is," answered Grace, doggedly. "When I see, I can burn it up if I don't like it."
"I wouldn't touch it for the whole world," exclaimed her room-mate. "Burn it up. Burn it up now, Grace. What if the girls found it out! We would be disgraced, ostracized, perhaps expelled!"
"If you don't tell, I will take care that no one else sees it," said Grace.
The next day Grace feigned a headache, and remained in her room to read the book. That evening her room-mate asked about it.
"You will never see it," replied Grace. "I looked into it and concluded you were right; it would never do for that book to be found in our room. I have destroyed it."
"Grace Chittenden," cried the girl, "I believe you pretended to have a headache so you could stay in our room and read that book! I have a mind to report you. What kind of a book was it? Tell me."
"Do you want me to corrupt you too, Mabel?" laughed Grace. "No; the book is destroyed, and that ends it. It is not the kind of a book I thought it was—not so horrid; but it makes one think. I am almost sorry I read it."
That night Grace lay awake a long time thinking of Uncle Tom and Little Eva, and more than once she sighed, "Tilly is right. Slavery is wicked—wicked!"
Grace had been in school two years when the war opened. Even the seclusion of a girl's boarding school could not help being penetrated by the fierce excitement which swept through the whole country. The streets were filled with marching troops. Many of the girls had brothers in Frost's militia. Then Camp Jackson was taken.