Again the Governor paused before replying.  There was a curious gravity about his consideration of Gershom in spite of the satirical tone of his responses.  Was it possible that he was the one man in town who did not treat the fellow as a ridiculous farce?

“If by dirty work you mean the clearing away of obstacles—­well, somebody has to do it, hasn’t he?” asked Gideon Vetch.  “If you want a clean street to walk on, you must hire somebody to shovel away the slush.  It is true that we put Gershom to shovelling slush—­and you complain of his methods!  Well, I admit that he may have been a trifle too zealous about it; he may have spattered things a bit more than was necessary, but after all, he got some of the mud out of the way, didn’t he?  There are people,” he added, “who believe that the wind he raised swept me into office.”

“I object to his methods,” insisted Stephen, “because they seem to me dishonest.”

“Perhaps.”  The blue eyes—­how could he have thought them gray?—­had grown quizzical.  “But he wasn’t moving in the best company, you know.  He who sups with the Devil must fish with a long spoon.”

“You mean that you defend that sort of thing—­that you openly stand for it?”

“I stand for nothing, sir,” replied Gideon Vetch sharply, “except justice.  I stand for a square deal all round, and I stand against the exploitation or oppression of any class.  This is what I stand for, and I have stood for it ever since I was a small, gray, scared rabbit of a creature dodging under hedgerows.”

It was the bombastic sophistry again, Stephen told himself, but he met it without subterfuge or evasion.  “And you believe that such people as Gershom can serve the cause of justice through dishonest means?” he demanded.

“I’ll answer that some day; but it’s a long answer, and I can’t speak it out here in the cold,” responded the Governor, while his blustering manner grew sober.  “Gershom is a politician, you see, and I am not.  You may laugh, but it is the Gospel truth.  I am a reformer, and all I care about is pushing on the idea.  I use any tools that I find; and one of the greatest of reformers has said that he was sometimes obliged to use bad ones.  If I find good ones, so much the better; if bad—­well, it is all in the day’s job.  But the cause is what matters—­the thing you are making, not the implements with which it is made.  You dislike my methods of work, but you must admit that by the only test that counts, the test of achievement, they have proved to be sound.  I have got somewhere; not all the way; but still somewhere.  Without advertisement, without patronage, without a cent I could call my own, I put my wares on the market.  I became Governor of Virginia in spite of everything you did, or did not do, to prevent it.”  There was a strange effectiveness in the simplicity of the man’s speech.  It was natural; it was racy; it was like nothing that Stephen had ever heard before.  He wondered if it could be traced back to the phraseology of the circus?  “Of course you think I am an extremist,” concluded Gideon Vetch abruptly, “but before you are as old as I am you will have learned that the only way to get half a loaf is to ask for a whole one.  Come again, and I’ll talk to you.”