In all this dialogue, Mr. Neal had over him the enormous advantage of exact and superior knowledge.  To tell the truth, West knew very little about the reformatory situation, and considered it, among the dozens of matters in which he was interested, rather a small issue.  Having turned the campaign over to his assistant, he had dismissed it from his mind; and beyond his general conviction that the reformatory would be a good thing for the State, he had only the sketchiest acquaintance with the arguments that were being used pro and con.  Therefore Plonny Neal’s passionate earnestness surprised him, and Plonny’s reasoning, which he knew to be the reasoning of the thoroughly informed State leaders, impressed him very decidedly.  Of the boss’s sincerity he never entertained a doubt; to question that candid eye was impossible.  That Plonny had long been watching him with interest and admiration, West knew very well.  It began to look to him very much as though Queed, through excess of sociological zeal, had allowed himself to be misled, and that the paper’s advanced position was founded on theory without reference to existing practical conditions.

West keenly felt the responsibility of his post.  To safeguard and promote the welfare of the Democratic party had long been a cardinal principle of the paper whose utterances he now controlled.  Still, it must be true that Neal was painting the situation in colors altogether too black.

“You’re a pretty good stump performer yourself, Plonny.  Don’t you know that exactly the same argument will be urged two years from now?”

“I know it won’t,” said Plonny with the calmness of absolute conviction.  “A fat legislature always follows a lean one.  They come in strips, same as a shoulder of bacon.”

“Well!  I wouldn’t think much of a party whose legs were so weak that a little step forward—­everybody knows it’s forward—­would tumble it over in a heap.”

“The party!  I ain’t thinking of the party, Mr. West.  I’m thinking,” said Neal, the indignation in his voice giving way to a sudden apologetic softness, “of you.”

“Me?  What on earth have I got to do with it?” asked West, rather touched by the look of dog-like affection in the other’s eyes.

“Everything.  If the party gets let in for this extravagance, you’ll be the man who did it.”

There was a silence, and then West said, rather nobly: 

“Well, I suppose I will have to stand that.  I must do what I think is right, you know, and take the consequences.”

“Two years from now,” said Mr. Neal, gently, “there wouldn’t be no consequences.”

“Possibly not,” said West, in a firm voice.

“While the consequences now,” continued Mr. Neal, still more gently, “would be to put you in very bad with the party leaders.  Fine men they are, but they never forgive a man who puts a crimp into the party.  You’d be a marked man to the longest day you lived!”