“What do they do?”
“Take all the letters addressed to eminent Whites to some Red officer in the fortress; then he steams them, I suppose, and reads them and has them photographed or copied before they are delivered.”
“I wonder they take the pains,” Hi said. “If they’re dirty enough skunks to read other people’s letters, they’re dirty enough skunks to forge false ones.”
“Oh, they are; but they like to know what is going on, as well as what they imagine. Don’t speak of these things to mother, or before her, Hi, if you don’t mind. I’m afraid I rather shut you up when you asked about the celebrations. But mother hasn’t been well for some time. She thinks that something terrible is happening; or soon going to happen. Any allusion to the Reds just now upsets her.”
“Right,” Hi said, “I’ll be silent. But I say, Rosa; I wish you’d tell me why you didn’t bow or smile or anything when those market people cheered you.”
“Did it seem very bad manners?”
“It struck me as a little odd.”
“We’re Whites,” she answered. “We’re watched pretty closely. What is to stop the Reds from sending agents to cheer the Whites in our presence, and watching whether we applaud? What would stop them arresting us for fomenting party feeling or ‘encouraging White excesses,’ as they would call it?”
“They couldn’t,”
“Why not? What is to stop them?”