"Yes. Your father is going to see you and I was nervous and frightened and wanted to pass the time until you were free again"—she paused, looked at him intently and spoke in a queer monotone—"the negroes who can't read and write have been disfranchised, haven't they?"
"Yes," he answered mechanically, "the ballot should never have been given them."
"Yet there's something pitiful about it after all, isn't there, Tom?" She asked the question with a strained wistfulness that startled the boy.
He answered automatically, but his keen, young eyes were studying with growing anxiety every movement of her face and form and every tone of her voice:
"I don't see it," he said carelessly.
She laid her left hand on his arm, the right hand still holding her bag and coat out of sight.
"Suppose," she whispered, "that you should wake up to-morrow morning and suddenly discover that a strain of negro blood poisoned your veins—what would you do?"
Tom frowned and watched her with a puzzled look:
"Never thought of such a thing!"
She pressed his arm eagerly: