Little Melville Brant stamped his foot on the floor, looked defiantly at his mother, and said, in the whining tone of a nine-year old child,
"Mother, I want to go."
"Melville, I have told you this dozen times that you cannot go," responded the mother with a positiveness that caused the boy to feel that his chances were slim.
"You are always telling me to keep ahead of the other boys, and I can't even get up to some of them," whined Melville plaintively.
"What do you mean?" asked the mother.
"Ben Stringer is always a crowing over me. Every time I tell anything big he jumps in and tells what he's seen, and that knocks me out. He has seen a whole lots of lynchings. His papa takes him. I bet if my papa was living he would take me," said Melville.
"My boy, listen to your mother," said Mrs. Brant. "Nothing but bad people take part in or go to see those things. I want mother's boy to scorn such things, to be way above them."
"Well, I ain't. I want to see it. Ben Stringer ain't got no business being ahead of me," Melville said with vigor.
The shrieking of the train whistle caused the fever of interest to rise in the little boy.