The Judge laughed softly. There was nothing, as he sometimes observed, that flavoured life so deliciously as a keen appreciation of comedy. "Now, I should call him a decidedly uncommon one," he remarked. "The trouble with you, my dear Powhatan, is that you are still in the village stage of the social instinct. In your proper period, when we Virginians were merely one of the several tribes in these United States, you may have served an excellent purpose; but the tribal instinct is dying out with the village stage. If we are going to exist at all outside of the archaeological department of a museum, we must learn to accept—. We must let in new blood."
"Do you mean to tell me, Horatio," blustered the General, "that I've got to let in the blood of a circus rider, sir?"
"Well, that depends. I haven't made up my mind about Vetch. He may be only froth, or he may be the vital element that we need. I haven't made up my mind, but I've met him and I like him. Indeed, I think I may say that Gideon and I are friends. We have come to the same point of view, it appears, by travelling on opposite roads. I had a long talk with him the other day, and I found that we think alike about a number of things."
"Think alike about fiddlesticks!" spluttered the General, while he spilled over his waistcoat the water Corinna had given him. "Why, the fellow ain't even in your class, sir!"
"I said we had thoughts, not habits, in common, Powhatan," rejoined the Judge blandly. "The same habits make a class, but the same thoughts make a friendship."
"He told me he had talked to you," said Stephen eagerly, "and I wanted to know what your impression was. He called you a great old boy, by the way."
The Judge, who could wear at will the face either of Brutus or of Antony, became at once the genial friend of humanity. "That pleases me more than you realize," he said. "I have a suspicion that Gideon knows human nature about as thoroughly as our General here knows the battles of the Confederacy."
"I confess the man rather gripped me," rejoined Stephen. "There's something about him, personality or mere play-acting, that catches one in spite of oneself."
The Judge appeared to acquiesce. "I am inclined to think," he observed presently, "that the quality you feel in Vetch is simply a violent candour. Most people give you truth in small quantities; but Vetch pours it out in a torrent. He offers it to you as Powhatan used to take his Bourbon in the good old days before the Eighteenth Amendment—straight and strong. I used to tell Powhatan that he'd get the name of a drunkard simply because he could stand what the rest of the world couldn't—and I'll say as much for our friend Gideon."
"Do you mean, my dear," inquired Corinna placidly, "that the Governor is honestly dishonest?"