They were still standing on the deserted corner below the garden, and while she waited for his answer, she glanced away from him up the side street, which rose in a steep ascent from the business quarter of the town.  The sun was still high over the distant housetops and the light turned the brick pavement to a rich red and shot the clouds of gray dust with silver.  The neighbourhood was one which had seen better days, and some well-built old houses, with red walls and white porches, lent an air of hospitality and comfortable living to the numerous cheap boarding places that filled the street.  Crowds of children were playing games or skating on roller skates over the sidewalk; and on the porches a few listless women gossiped idly; or gazed out over newspapers which they did not read.

“Well, there ain’t anything wrong exactly—­yet,” replied Gershom.

“But there may be, you think?”

“That depends upon him.  If he keeps headed the way he’s going, and he’s as stubborn as a mule, there’ll be trouble as sure as my name is Julius.”

“Is that what you’ve quarrelled about of late—­the way he’s going?”

“Bless your heart, honey, we ain’t quarrelled!  Has it sounded like that to you?  I’ve just been trying to make him see reason, that’s all.  He ain’t got a right, you know, to turn against his best friends the way he’s doing.  Friends are friends whether you are in office or out, and there’s a lot that a man owes to the folks that have stood by him.  I tell you I know politics from the bottom up, and there ain’t no room in ’em for the man—­I don’t give a darn who he is—­that don’t stand by his friends.  If he’s the President of the United States, he’ll find that he can’t afford not to stand by the people who put him there!”

So this was the trouble!  He had let out his grievance at last, and from the smouldering resentment in his eyes, she understood that some real or imaginary injustice had put him, for the moment at least, in an ugly temper.  If he had not met her when he left the house, if he had waited to grow cool, to reflect, he would probably never have taken her into his confidence.  Chance again, she thought, not without bitterness.  How much of the happiness or unhappiness of life depended upon chance!

“I don’t believe it,” she returned emphatically.  “He always stands by people.”

“He used to,” he replied sullenly, “but that was in the old days when he needed ’em.  The truth is he’s got his head turned by his election.  He thinks he’s so strong that he can go on alone and keep the crowd at his back; but he’ll find he’s mistaken, and that the crowd, when it ain’t worked right from the inside, is a poor thing to depend on.  The crowd does the shouting, but it’s a man’s friends that start the tune.”

“Are you talking about the strike?” she asked.  “I thought he was in sympathy with the strikers.”

“Oh, he says he is, but he won’t prove it.”