They had followed up words of ours on the
science of optics, asked innocent questions about glasses and the
like, and were aware of the defective eyesight so common among us.
With the lightest touch, different women asking different
questions at different times, and putting all our answers together
like a picture puzzle, they had figured out a sort of skeleton chart
as to the prevalence of disease among us. Even more subtly with
no show of horror or condemnation, they had gathered something--far
from the truth, but something pretty clear--about poverty, vice,
and crime. They even had a goodly number of our dangers all itemized,
from asking us about insurance and innocent things like that.
They were well posted as to the different races, beginning
with their poison-arrow natives down below and widening out
to the broad racial divisions we had told them about. Never a
shocked expression of the face or exclamation of revolt had
warned us; they had been extracting the evidence without our
knowing it all this time, and now were studying with the most
devout earnestness the matter they had prepared.
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