Page:The fighting scrub, (IA fightingscrub00barb).pdf/119

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Jimmy dumped the ballots on the bed, and Clem prepared to tabulate them on the back of an envelope exhumed from a pocket. Lou Stiles interrupted proceedings.

"Hold on a sec! How are we doing this? Does a majority elect or a plurality or what?"

"Plurality," decided Clem, and as no one dissented—although Leo Gosman wanted anxiously to know what a plurality was—the counting proceeded, and after a minute, Clif read the result. "Ridgway gets four," announced Clif, "Kemble ten and Tyson six. Kemble is elected. The meeting's adjourned sine die, pro tem and e pluribus unum!"

"Speech! Speech!"

"I don't know how," responded Tom, grinning. "Besides, there isn't time. But I want to say that I thank you fellows for the honor, and that I'll do my best to help you put the Fighting Scrub on the map. I don't deserve the captaincy, of course; most any of the rest of you would have been better; but I'll certainly try to deserve the—er—unexpected honor. That's all, I guess."

"Hold on," said "Babe." "Let's make it unanimous, fellows. What do you say?"

"I'll second that," declared Pat Tyson good-naturedly.

"Moved and seconded—"

"You can't! The meeting's adjourned," laughed some one.

"Forget it! Kemble is unanimously elected Captain