“Not at all. I have an appointment with my cousin.”
“With Mr. Jefferson Farnum?” Alice asked in awakened interest. “I've just been reading a magazine article about him. Is he really a remarkable man?”
“I don't think you would call him remarkable. He gets things done, in spite of being an idealist.”
“Why, in spite of it?”
“Aren't reformers usually unpractical?”
“Are they? I don't know. I have never met one.” She looked straight at Farnum with the directness characteristic of her. “Is the article in Stetson's Magazine true?”
“Substantially, I think.”
Alice hesitated. She would have liked to pursue the subject, but she could not very well do that with his cousin. For years she had been hearing of this man as a crank agitator who had set himself in opposition to her father and his friends for selfish reasons. Her father had dropped vague hints about his unsavory life. The Stetson write-up had given a very different story. If it told the truth, many things she had been brought up to accept without question would bear study.
James suavely explained. “The facts are true, but not the inferences from the facts. Jeff takes rather a one-sided view of a very complex situation. But he's perfectly honest in it, so far as that goes.”
“You voted for his bill, didn't you?” Alice asked.