He had risen to say good night, but it is not on record that lovers resent delays in their leave-takings.
"At the registration every qualified voter must be enrolled," he told her. "The camera squads have been formed to make rounds of the precincts and take certain pictures."
"Why?"
"Because we have fairly reliable information that the town will be overrun with flying squadrons of imported repeaters—and that the police who should lock them up mean to protect them."
"What are repeaters?" she naïvely inquired, and he enlightened her out of the treasury of his newly acquired wisdom.
"We believe that hundreds of floating and disreputable fellows have been brought in from other towns and will be registered here as voters. After registering they will disappear as unostentatiously as they came. But meanwhile they will not satisfy themselves with being enrolled once, as the decent citizens must do. They will go from precinct to precinct, using fake addresses and changing names."
He smiled grimly, and then added with inelegant directness:
"We aim to get pictures of some of those birds—for use in court later."
"And the police will hamper you?"
"We don't expect much help from them."