“You said you didn’t intend to argue!”
“I do not intend to argue. I’m simply going to ask if you think I would be justified in using my vote, or withholding it, to continue a practice that is in defiance of the orders of the land department, even to please my own father?”
“That order is not, as I understand, a legal enactment, and it might be changed,” she urged.
“It will be changed, no doubt, if the cattlemen win; but should it be changed, or withdrawn?”
“It seems to me that the settlers are doing well enough, and those fences aren’t injuring anybody.”
He was silent a moment, thinking.
“I want to please your Uncle Philip—my father—and I want to please you. I’ll admit that I have myself had some doubts on this question lately, serious doubts. Yet I cannot make myself think that I have not been in the right from the first. If I thought I was wrong I would change in a minute without regard to the consequences.”
“It wouldn’t be right for me to urge you to vote against your conscience,” she admitted, touched by his fine sense of honor. “Only, as I’ve tried to think it over and get at the right of it, it has seemed to me that there are, must be, two sides to the question. Every question has two sides, you know.”
“Yes; that is so.”
She went on, not sure of her ground, nor altogether certain of herself; yet feeling that this was a crucial moment and that every argument ought to be duly weighed and considered.