Absorbed in our talk, we had not heard the steps of Dr. Leete as he
approached.

"I have been watching you for ten minutes from the house," he said,
"until, in fact, I could no longer resist the desire to know what you
find so interesting."

"Your daughter," said I, "has been proving herself a mistress of the
Socratic method. Under a plausible pretext of gross ignorance, she has
been asking me a series of easy questions, with the result that I see as
I never imagined it before the colossal sham of our pretended popular
government in America. As one of the rich I knew, of course, that we had
a great deal of power in the state, but I did not before realize how
absolutely the people were without influence in their own government."

"Aha!" exclaimed the doctor in great glee, "so my daughter gets up early
in the morning with the design of supplanting her father in his position
of historical instructor?"

Edith had risen from the garden bench on which we had been seated and was
arranging her flowers to take into the house. She shook her head rather
gravely in reply to her father's challenge.

"You need not be at all apprehensive," she said; "Julian has quite cured
me this morning of any wish I might have had to inquire further into the
condition of our ancestors. I have always been dreadfully sorry for the
poor people of that day on account of the misery they endured from
poverty and the oppression of the rich. Henceforth, however, I wash my
hands of them and shall reserve my sympathy for more deserving objects."