I counted the seeds in each slice of watermelon and gave that as the number of comrades in each mill.

The number was too high.

Comrade Bannerman knew how many Reds there were in the country, and it appeared that the few mills I had worked in contained practically the whole communist party.
He got rather excited and said the numbers were growing faster than he had imagined.

He had figured that it would take forty years to bring about the Red commonwealth, but with the new light I had thrown on the subject he concluded that the times were ripening faster than he had dared to hope, and that there was no doubt the revolution would be upon us within three years.
The comrade told me he was not popular in the village for two reasons.
The capitalistic storekeepers called him a dead beat and the church people had rotten-egged him for a speech he had made denouncing religion.

I saw by his hands that he didn't work much, and from the hands of his wife I learned who raised the watermelons he was feeding to me.