“Much obliged,” returned Marchmont, apparently flattered. “I don’t think it’s much, myself, but they seemed to like it.”
“It’s the best thing I’ve ever known them to have,” exclaimed Wolcott. “How did you get hold of the idea?”
Marchmont, who appeared unexpectedly embarrassed by his friend’s praise, hesitated. “Oh, something that happened the last time we went over put it into my head. I jotted down some lines at the time, and the other day it occurred to me to fix them up and send them in.”
“You had something in it last month, too,” continued Lindsay. “I guess you’ll make the board all right. I’ve sent in two things to the _Seatonian_, but they didn’t print either of them.”
“I suppose there’s more competition for the _Seatonian_,” said the poet.
Lindsay opened the door and turned for a last word.
“I’m going to send my _Lit_ home to my family to show them what we can do here,” he said. “My aunt is stuck on poetry, and she’s got a notion that we don’t do anything here but play ball. This will set her right. Good night.”
“Oh, don’t bother them with it,” called Marchmont; but Lindsay was already out of hearing.
The middlers’ class meeting came a few days later, interjecting two days of excitement into the dulness of winter. When Rogers, who had been made president in the fall, unexpectedly left school, the natural course would have been to advance Laughlin, who was vice-president, and elect a new man to succeed him. This might have been done without the least flurry of excitement in a two-minute meeting called after a recitation. The plot hatched in Stone’s room made such a course impossible.
Let it not be for a moment supposed that the Whitely-Marchmont combination kept their movements secret. The partisanship was too violent to bear restraint. In the hour when an eager but unwise member of the Butler faction undertook to canvass a natural follower of Laughlin, a Laughlin party came suddenly into existence, and on vague hints of a conspiracy had a wondrous growth.
In the old days of small classes every boy would have been pledged beforehand, and brought personally to do his duty at the polls. With a class of more than a hundred to deal with, this was not so easy. Some were too lazy and indifferent to be stirred by entreaty; a few serious plodders scorned the whole agitation; a larger number still, either from actual indecision or through a desire for fun, declined to commit themselves in advance. Nevertheless, when Marchmont and his companions, who had been hustling all day like busy ward heelers, gathered their pledged followers for an imposing entry into the assembly room, they constituted a truly formidable body.