“For smiling and bowing just because people cheer you?”
“Yes, Hi, and for even looking as though you wished to smile and bow. ‘Gestures prejudicial to civil peace,’ is the phrase they use, or ‘conduct deemed to be provocative of civil disturbance,’ that is another.”
“Arrest you and your mother?”
“Yes, rather; like billio.”
“But, good Lord, what are the Whites doing to let these Reds do these things? They must be jugginses.”
“There aren’t many Whites on this side of Santa Barbara: the Whites are all in the west.”
“Yes; but they must know.”
“It isn’t so easy as it sounds. The Whites did a lot of stupid things when they were in power; trying to stop the Schools Acts and other Acts which the Reds had just passed; naturally the Reds were furious.”
“Yes; but hang it all, Rosa, stopping a sort of Act of Parliament is done in a civilised way, by law; but these Reds have brought in all these yellow devils. I can’t see why the Whites allow that.”
“The Pitubas? We’re used to them here. They’re not so bad as they look. They don’t eat all the babies they’re credited with. They may munch a finger here and there. What I mind is the censorship and the spying, and the knowledge that all the time these Red officers are making dossiers against all whom one holds dear: false dossiers, with forged evidence, which they may use.”