The Spirit of the Leader/Chapter 2
PERRY KING, tall, thin, bony and ungainly, stood beside a pile of tumbled sweaters and tasted an importance that was new, and strange, and intoxicating. Bristow, the editor of the Northfield Breeze, had actually asked him to bring back the story of the game for the school paper. And, if that were not glory enough, Hammond, quarterback and captain of the eleven, had asked him to keep check on the time. He caught Hammond's eye and made a signal with his fingers. Seven minutes to play! A great game, with Northfield in the lead 14 to 7; and he, Perry King, with his part in it all.
The stands were bleak and deserted; the crowd was following the game along the side lines. The sky was gray, the ground was damp, a chill wind blew across the field—but Perry did not bother to button his topcoat across his narrow chest. He did not even feel the penetrating rawness of the day. The ambition that had been part of him for two years, the yearning to have some part in the athletic life of his school, had at last been realized. Overnight, as it were, through his election as manager of the team, he had become a somebody.
He told himself that he had made a good job of this, his first game. He had checked up suit cases in the Northfield gym and had grouped them in a corner so that the start had been without confusion and last-minute frenzy. He had checked up again just before leaving and had found Littlefield, the right end, to be minus his head guard. They had reached the railroad station late, to find a clamoring line of men and women in front of the ticket window; but he had purchased tickets for the team the day before. "Some head," George Praska, the big guard, had commended. The same glow that had run through Perry then ran through him now at the memory.
A cheer broke from the handful of Northfield rooters who had accompanied the team.
"Wasn't it Praska who stopped that play?" a voice asked at Perry's elbow.
"I wasn't watching just then," Perry answered.
The voice was deferential. "I suppose you've got to just close your eyes to the game and give all your attention to the watch. It's just like being one of the team, isn't it?"
"Well," Perry said carelessly, "it's not exactly that."
This was another thing new to him, having somebody tag along at his elbow. He was not without vanity; he found the experience pleasant. Even if the tagger was only Johnnie Baffin, it showed that already his position was felt and marked.
Baffin was, perhaps, the least of all the Northfield students. Every high school has a few of his kind—good-natured but dull fellows who find the simplest studies hard, who are baffled by problems demanding thought and analysis, and who blunder along in a sort of scared and pathetic helplessness. They have no opinions of their own, follow blindly where the more venturesome lead, and contribute absolutely nothing to the welfare of their schools. How Johnnie Baffin had managed to get through his freshman and sophomore years was the ever-present Northfield mystery. It was a mystery to Johnnie, too. Only the faculty knew how narrow the margin of his escape. Had he dropped out of school his going would have created not even a ripple. The boy in the next seat might not have marked that he had gone. For even in a crowd he was always on the outskirts, a shrinking, unnoticed, almost apologetic figure.
The Northfield cheer came presumptuously from the few Northfield throats.
"I guess it's our ball, isn't it?" Baffin asked.
Perry surveyed the field. "Of course it's our ball. There's Hammond crouched behind the center ready to take the pass. Where's your eyes?"
"Yes; our ball," Baffin said with more confidence. "Not much chance to score again, I guess."
"Lots of chance," said Perry, "with a corking good team like ours."
"Yes, I guess there is," Baffin agreed. He never argued his opinion, but quickly ran to cover and surrendered. The school—those who observed him at all—called him "Me, too, Johnnie."
The team did score again, Hammond carrying the ball around the end on a quarterback run.
"Didn't I tell you?" Perry cried, and made note of the length of the run on a slip of paper. A minute later the game was over. Even as the team cheered its rivals, even as the players broke and ran for the dressing room, Perry gathered up the sweaters and with full and overflowing arms staggered after.
There was work for him to do in his capacity as manager. First he collected from the manager of the rival school one half the traveling expenses of his team, and gravely signed a receipt for the money. Then sitting on a bench, he drew from his pockets a miscellaneous collection—rings, watches, fobs, a pair of glasses, some greenbacks and a jingling handful of silver. Next, with a memorandum before him, he began to count the money into piles. This was part of the manager's job at Northfield—acting as custodian of those valuables that the players brought to the game.
Littlefield was the first Northfield boy dressed. "Hi, there, Perry; I gave you eighty cents."
Perry consulted the memorandum. Littlefield's name was there with "80R." written next to it. Perry handed him a half a dollar, a quarter and a nickel. "You'll have to pick out your own ring," he said. "Pick a good one."
Littlefield grinned good-naturedly at this ancient joke.
"One dollar and five cents for me," came another voice.
Hammond called from down the room. "Be sure you don't over-pay some of those pirates and run short, Perry. I'm down on your books for thirty-five cents."
Presently the last player had drawn what was coming to him, and Perry's responsibility was ended. At the door he kept shouting, "Ten minutes to train-time, fellows, ten minutes!" One by one, as they filed out, he handed them their return trip tickets. When the last player was accounted for he went stalking after them, a long-legged person pleasingly responsive to the savor of his duties and responsibilities.
When the train came in, the team made the usual scramble for places. Perry found himself in a seat with Praska. The guard was watching him with a quizzical expression in his eyes. Perry, new to his position, grew uneasy.
"What's the matter? Did I do something wrong?"
Praska shook his head. "I was thinking of something else. Why did you make a note of what everybody gave you?"
"I wanted to have it right, of course."
"But if we gave you only four or five dollars, you'd pay back only four or five dollars, wouldn't you?"
"But I wanted to make sure each fellow got back exactly what was coming to him."
Praska nodded. "That's the value of having a thing in black and white. You know just what value to give each one. You don't have to wonder about this fellow or that fellow. No guessing; you just study what's on the slip."
There was a quality in Praska's voice now that gave Perry pause. He had heard that speculative, slow, thoughtful tone before. Usually it meant that the guard, after his own deliberate fashion, was establishing a point he wanted to make. Perry glanced at him suspiciously.
"Funny, isn't it," the guard went on, "how important things are always set down in writing and not left to chance. The man who buys a house gets a deed. If he puts money in the bank he gets a bank book. If he goes into business he hires a bookkeeper."
"What's funny about that?" Perry wanted to know.
"Nothing." Praska's voice was mild. "If a big business house has a good job open and three men apply, it makes them fill out a statement. With everything before it, it can think things over, decide what man is best qualified, and—"
But Perry waited to hear no more. A light had broken upon him. One movement and he was out of the seat; another, and he was in the aisle of the coach.
"Leading up to another argument about the home room election, aren't you?" he demanded. "Almost caught me, too, didn't you? Getting so a fellow can't come near you without hearing about ballots, ballots, ballots. You're a fine football player, George, but on this election business you're a three-ringed nuisance. I'm going up front and find a seat in which I can ride in peace."
Praska smiled patiently. "You admitted, Perry, that there was nothing funny about setting things down in writing in banks, and"
But Perry fled through the aisle up toward the coach ahead.
The smile remained on Praska's face after Perry had disappeared through the car door, but it did not extend to his eyes, nor was there humor running through his mind. The conductor came through, he handed over his ticket absently, and his gaze wandered out of the window. The train was running through rolling country—brown fields stripped bare of their harvest, cows standing in fall-thinned pastures with bovine placidity, white houses seen through the bare trees and tidy, red barns. But the pastoral picture might just as well not have been there. He did not see it.
His mind was back in Room 13. The room had been in operation for only three weeks, but already it had made a deep and telling impression upon him. He had for it the passionate love that the true citizen feels for his country. It was his country—his school country, his republic in miniature, and his part in it lay over his soul. Once Mr. Banning had said that honor and integrity would be written of Room 13 only as each student brought honor and integrity to it. Praska, pondering that, had never forgotten. He was thinking of Mr. Banning's words now.
In three days the room would elect its officers. Praska's face became grave. To him that election was not a thing of passing moment but an event of epic importance. His studies under Mr. Banning had impressed him with the fact that great causes brought forth great leaders. He viewed his home room—its unity, its ambitions, its loyalty—as a great cause. Would it select a leader who would inspire it to great efforts? For himself he had no ambitions; for the home room he had many aspirations.
Unconsciously he had followed Mr. Banning far. The teacher, an unassuming, apparently commonplace sort of man, influenced much of his thought. One day, in class, Mr. Banning had spoken of the early settlers of the West—of how, though a part of the country, the threads that knit them to the Government at Washington were long and loose. Looking back, Praska told himself that that has been his position in the school. He had been a Northfield man—just that and nothing more. But the home room had gathered him in with others, had made him feel the depth of his association with them, and out of it had sprung the sentiment that suddenly made the school a background of real life and a tower of inspiration. He had been transformed into Praska of Room 13 of Northfield High. So had the unconfined limitless prairies become the bounded States of a great Union.
In the announcement that Room 13 was to elect its officers, Praska had found a thrill of a kind that had never come to him in the heat of play on the football field. The word itself had a sound of solemnity. He viewed elections as something sacred. Men had frozen, starved and died for the right of free expression. But the home room, judged by its actions, was not awed. Instead of serious thought, Praska found clamor and a confusion of rival claims. Each student had his own idea of who should be elevated to the honors. Debates went on heatedly in the corridors, in the cafeteria, and even in the home room itself. Boys, overcome by the fury of argument, daily deserted their candidates and appeared with strange and bewildering choices. Instead of a calm weighing of candidates there was chaos. Consideration was routed by noise.
And then Praska had proposed a formal ballot; a ballot carefully prepared before the election day. "We need something," he said, "that will give a fellow an idea where he's at." But the home room, enjoying the excitement of expansive, spontaneous debate, would not listen. "The trouble with George," Hammond, the quarterback, had said plaintively, "is that he takes things too serious; you'd imagine we were going to elect a President of the United States." But Praska continued to agitate. He broke into arguments that were going on happily and merrily, and won only scowls or sighs. And then he began to find groups scattering at his approach. His eyes clouded at that, but did not lose their determination. There was something of the bulldog about him.
The train came to Northfield, but he sat at the window lost in his thoughts. Hammond called: "Come on, George; here's the place where we vote." Some of the others laughed. He roused himself, and came down the aisle with his suit case banging against his knees. He was the last of the team to reach the platform. The others were already half-way to the street. He called to Perry; but Perry, waving a hand in mock horror, hurried on.
"Good game, wasn't it?" said an apologetic voice at his elbow. Even when stating facts Johnny Baffin did not seem sure of himself.
The guard nodded absently. The game was a thing of the past. "What do you think of a formal ballot?" he asked suddenly.
Johnny squirmed. "It's an awful lot of trouble to go to just for a school election, isn't it? Most of the fellows think"
"What do you think about it?"
"Why, maybe each fellow could just write the names of the fellows he wanted—"
"Now look here!" Praska's muscular forefinger tapped his chest. "You're not thinking straight. That's too much hit and miss. A dozen fellows might be voted for, and one might win just because he happened to get about nine votes. Why didn't Mr. Banning hold this election before? He waited until we got settled and had a chance to size up each other. He wanted us to know what we were doing. And what are we doing? We're running around with everybody talking in a different key. Isn't that so?"
"Why, yes; I guess it is."
"That wouldn't happen if candidates were nominated and their names put on a ballot. We'd know who were candidates. Wouldn't that be better?"
"I—I didn't say it wouldn't be; I didn't say anything against it. Yes; I guess it would be." The boy backed away gingerly. "I must hurry home. I haven't thought much about it, but I guess you're right. I—Well, so long."
Praska shook his head. Even "Me, too, Johnny," made haste to get away from him. Laughing ruefully, he shifted his suit case to the other hand and went his way down the long station platform.
Three mornings later Room 13 assembled to report for a new school day. A contagious restlessness communicated itself along the rows of desks. The long-drawn-out argument over candidates—an argument that solved nothing and got no place—had begun to produce an impatient and nervous uncertainty. Mr. Banning had watched these symptoms develop not without inward anxiety. He knew the danger. At any moment there might be a reaction. Listlessness might take the place of feverish animation, and instead of being interested in candidates the students might become indifferent and languid. He determined to turn their minds into other channels.
"What I have to say," he said, "must be said hurriedly. The first period bell will ring in a moment. To-morrow we are to hold an election of far-reaching importance to this room. Thus far not a word has been said about the machinery by which this election should be carried out."
"He hasn't heard George," said Hammond in an audible undertone.
"Has somebody been discussing the subject?" the teacher asked innocently. "Good! Then you'll be prepared to handle the problem intelligently. Suppose we meet here after classes to-day and decide how the election shall be conducted? It that agreeable to you? Speak up if it isn't. Fine! This afternoon then. There goes the bell."
Praska's first period took him to the basement for manual training. As he worked at his lathe there were times when his mind wandered far from the pattern before him. On the way out of Room 13 he had caught some of the students looking at him curiously, and some of them had been smiling. Johnny Baffin had worn his characteristic air of baffled indecision.
Praska's mind was suddenly made up. Judging by the sentiment he had found, the plan he would offer would have no chance. But he determined now to offer it. He felt that he was right, and refused to be silenced by the spectre of defeat. This much settled, his attention came back to the work in hand.
During lunch hour in the cafeteria, Perry King approached his table and spoke in a guarded undertone.
"You're not going to talk prepared ballots and all that rot, are you?"
The guard nodded.
"I wouldn't if I were you. You've been a three-ringed pest on this thing, George, but a lot of the fellows are going to vote for you for class president. You'll just about kill your chances if you sing that song again to-day."
Praska ate in silence. Perry, construing this as acceptance of his own logic, was intensely gratified.
"I thought you'd be sensible about it," he said.
"How do you know a lot of the fellows are going to vote for me?"
"How do I know? Now, that's a question, isn't it? Haven't I been campaigning for you? Haven't I lined up about enough votes to put you over? I've done a job on this, I'll have you know."
"Getting to be a regular politician, aren't you?"
Perry swelled out his thin chest. "I'm going to make the talk in favor of having everybody just write his choice."
"I'm afraid I'll have to fight you on that. I'm still for a formal ballot."
The wind of optimism was knocked from Perry in a breath. His eyes, incredulous, searched his friend's face. There could be no mistaking its single purpose.
"That's a fine way to treat me after what I've been trying to do for you," he cried indignantly, unconscious that his voice had risen above the babble of the diners. "You're making a goat of yourself if you want to know what I think. You'll kill your chances. Everybody'll be saying you're just a pig-headed pirate."
Praska, used to these temperamental outbursts, shook his head patiently. "I haven't been a candidate. Anyway, if I believe ballot is the only way"
But Perry, after the manner of one whose best efforts had been shamefully flouted, walked away among the tables in dudgeon.
After classes that day the home room gathered. The students brought books with them and carried their hats to their seats. Plainly they felt that they were of one mind, and that the business they were to transact would take but a moment. The meeting moved briskly. In the absence of regular officers, Mr. Banning was delegated to act as chairman. There were whispered calls of "Perry! Perry! Make it snappy." Perry addressed the chair.
"I believe," Perry said easily, "that I express the sentiment of the room when I say that we'd like a rule giving each student permission simply to write his pick for each office. In that way they will have perfect freedom of choice. If I think John Jones is the best we have for president or secretary, or sergeant-at-arms I simply vote for him for the office I think he ought to have. That is the only way to have the election take the widest and freest range."
Praska, watching Perry, envied him the confident, casual way he spoke. Perry had in him, he thought, the making of an orator. But he shook his head slightly at his friend's reasoning.
"We think," Perry went on, "in a case like this we ought to have a chance to vote for whom we please and not be tied down by tickets. We want an election, not red tape."
His gaze, as he sat down, went over to Praska. Somebody chuckled, and then the sound was lost in a round of applause. Plainly, the room was with Perry. His gaze, going to Praska again in triumph, was stayed by the sight of the big guard rising somewhat ponderously from his seat.
"Mr. Chairman."
A subdued, good-natured groan ran about the room.
"Mr. Praska," Mr. Banning said gravely.
"I, for one, am opposed to the plan that—that has just been offered." Praska was having trouble with his words. "The United States has been doing business for a good many years, and I think if we try to improve on the Government we're not going to get very far. The trouble with Perry's plan is that it—it—it's too uncertain. Nobody knows who's a candidate. The votes will be scattered all over. A lot of fellows may just vote for friends, and then somebody may walk in as president merely because seven or eight fellows happen to agree on him. That won't be—" Praska was plainly stuck for the right word.
"Representative government," somebody suggested.
"Representative government," Praska accepted earnestly. "It will be minority government. I don't know whether I'm right or not, but I think the United States has the regular printed ballots so that the voters will know just who are seeking the office and can study their qualifications. That's getting right down to real candidates. This thing that Perry wants to do is like shooting in the dark. It's a grab bag. I think we ought to have candidates file petitions, and not to accept petitions unless they have at least five signers."
This last proposal was new to the room. There was a moment of shocked surprise.
"Why five signers?" Hammond asked belligerently.
"Well" George hesitated. "If a fellow can't get five students to sign his petition he wouldn't get five votes. That means he'd simply clog up the ballot and take strength from the real candidates. This election is a big thing for Room 13 and I'd like to see it go right."
There was no applause as he sat down, but now two or three of the students appeared thoughtful. Perry, not quite so sure of himself as he had been before, asked Mr. Banning to express an opinion, but the teacher smiled and shook his head. His policy, he told them, was to let them handle their own affairs without interference so long as he could. But even as he said it, his glance, with its fire of idealism, went to Praska and lingered.
The football guard had no false conceptions of what was to follow. No one offered another plan, and the matter went to a vote.
"All those who are in favor of the method as outlined by Mr. King" Mr. Banning began, and there was a clatter and rattle of seats as the students came to their feet. Johnny Baffin hesitated until he saw the overwhelming sway of sentiment, and then joined the crowd.
Nine boys remained seated, stoically unmindful of nudges and whispers from their companions. Praska's heart leaped. Nine who saw it as he did! He had lost his cause, but he had made converts. He had made progress. Next year, as time for the election drew near, there would be ten instead of one to talk in favor of a formal, regular ballot.
"Mr. King's plan carries," said Mr. Banning, "52 to 10."
There were cheers for the result, and some humorous banter for Praska. He sat unmoved. After that the meeting decided to vote next day during the luncheon hour. A committee of three was named to count the votes. Praska was selected as chairman of this committee and scarcely took note of the honor. He was still thinking of those nine recruits.
Out in the street Perry reproached him openly and bitterly. "Didn't I tell you if you stuck up your head you'd get a good licking? Do you think a defeat like that will help your chances for president?"
"I wasn't thinking of president."
"And then, all this talk of grab bags"
"How many fellows have a chance to-morrow?" Praska interrupted.
"How should I know?"
"Then it will be a grab bag. Nobody knows what surprises may come out of it. Why, somebody that three-quarters of the fellows have never given a thought may bob up as the winner."
"Rats!" Perry said in disgust. "This thing has gone to your head. Your wheels are loose."
"Possibly," Praska said mildly. He was looking toward the school entrance where "Me, too, Johnny" was just coming out. "Possibly," the guard said again, but this time merely because the word lingered on his tongue. He continued to stare absently after Johnny as that boy walked up the street; the germ of a bewildering and startling idea had begun to turn and twist itself slowly through the recess of his mind.
That night, after much thinking, the germ developed into a plan.
Next morning he came to school subtly and mysteriously changed. The habitual air of seriousness that marked him was gone, and in its stead was a gay, bubbling quality that suggested that he was filled with some inward vision of mirth. To one of deep and sharp penetration, it would have been apparent that the rollicking mood was forced—but Perry, who met him outside the high school building, was neither deep nor sharp.
"Believe me," he said with feeling, "I'm glad to see your old sober-sides looking human. I was beginning to think you'd keep up that election argument all through the semester. I'm a friend of yours and all that, George, but you are a tiresome old pest when you start reforming and that's flat."
Praska merely glanced at him and smiled contemplatively.
"What are you looking at me that way for? What's the joke?"
Praska looked about him guardedly. Perry's interest was quickened.
"What's it all about, George? Something good? Something in the wind?"
Praska spoke in an undertone. "Want to have a laugh out of this election? Oh, nothing that will spoil it; just something that will get the whole crowd?"
Perry was eager. "What is it?"
"Vote for 'Me, too, Johnny' for president."
"Johnny Baffin!" Perry's voice was incredulous.
"Johnny Baffin," Praska said calmly.
Perry, usually deft with words, was for the moment speechless. But as the thing he was asked to do broke upon him he began to shake his head.
"I'm going to vote for you. Why should I throw away a vote?"
"But nobody is going to win this election by one vote. You know that. What difference does one vote make?"
Older persons than Perry have been fooled with that same question. He waivered. There might, he thought, be something in what the guard said. And then Praska leaned closer.
"Can't you picture it, Perry? Just one vote in the whole box for Johnny. It will be a scream. The whole room will be flabbergasted. 'Me-too-Johnny' voted for president. Good night!"
All at once Perry shook with laughter. Lines that had formed themselves in Praska's forehead—lines of apprehension—began to clear.
"Won't it be rich, though? I'll do it; one vote won't matter. Wait until I tell"
Praska's hand closed on his arm. "Tell nothing. Do you want to spoil it? You'll tell somebody, and he'll tell somebody else, and then everybody'll know it. Then what's left of our joke? Just you and me, Perry, and we'll sit back and watch the room when the vote is announced. It will be as good as a circus."
"I won't tell a soul," Perry promised. "'Me, too, Johnny'—Boy, I just want to sit back and watch them. Circus? It will be a riot."
In the lower corridor Praska mixed with the crowd, talking and laughing more than he usually did. He set more than one passing group into a roar by hurling some unexpectedly humorous comment at some one of them. Whenever he stopped to talk to any boy, he left that individual chuckling. Hammond fairly shouted at something Praska had said. "Old George is actually getting funny," the football captain explained. And Praska continued to laugh and joke—with sober eyes.
At noon Miss Quigley, domestic science teacher in charge of the cafeteria, expressed the opinion that there was "Something the matter with those Room 13 boys." They ordered scanty lunches, ate rapidly, and at once departed. Somebody had brought a hat box that morning, and Praska and his assistants had slit a hole in the top and had placed it on Mr. Banning's desk to serve as a ballot box. Perry was the first student to vote. He slipped his ballot through the opening and winked at the football guard. Just at that moment it dawned on him that if Praska merely wanted to see only one vote cast for Johnny Baffin he could have cast the ballot himself. He went back to his seat a bit perplexed.
Then came a deluge of folded papers dropped through the slit in the box. The students, crowding in line, filed past and voted as their names, were checked. In fifteen minutes the last ballot had been cast. Mr. Banning looked at his watch.
"We have thirty minutes before the first afternoon period," he said. "It is your desire to have the vote counted now or after classes?"
"Now," came a chorus from the seats.
Praska, as chairman of the tellers, picked up the box; flanked by his two committee members, he walked from the room. The door closed after him. There was a moment of dead silence.
"They ought to be back in about ten minutes," said a voice.
But ten minutes passed, and there was no sign of the committee. Perry, secure in the knowledge of the thunderclap that was soon to come, first smiled and then began to chuckle. A vote for "Me, too, Johnny!" And who would be more surprised than Johnny Baffin himself? He pictured the blank amazement of the others, and began to chuckle again—and then the chuckle stopped. The door had opened, and the tellers were coming in with the result.
One look at their faces, and Perry sat bolt upright in his seat. Two of the tellers were plainly dazed. One of them, catching the eye of a friend, threw up his hand in a tragic gesture of despair. Praska, with the vote tabulation in one hand and the hat box under the other arm, alone of the three seemed placid and serene. Watching him, Perry felt a sudden shaft of icy apprehension.
"Mr. Banning," said Praska, "the committee asks you to announce the result."
Mr. Banning took the tabulation. The room was still. The teacher of civics looked at it, stared, looked again and held the paper a bit closer to his eyes. Then his gaze came up to survey the class. Twice he coughed as though to clear his throat.
"For president of Room 13," he said, "John Baffin received 15 votes, George Praska 13, Frank Hammond 7"
Perry heard no more. All at once the plan dawned on him. Why, Praska had asked a lot of fellows to vote for "Me, too, Johnny." The stillness had now become a profound and breathless silence.
Mr. Banning was reading the vote for the other offices; but now nobody heard him. The tension was broken by a choking sound. A murmur ran through the room like an unexpected wind rustling through startled reeds. It grew, died, and grew again. Mr. Banning finished reading, folded the paper slowly and laid it on his desk. His glance went to Praska. The football guard looked the other way. And then Mr. Banning understood.
The room was beginning to recover. It was a room athrob with consternation, but it had its sense of loyalty. A voice cried the summons for a cheer. It started as a weak straggle, gained volume, and finished with a burst of sound. A cry went up for "Speech! Speech!" This was followed by the chant "We want Johnny Baffin! We want Johnny Baffin!"
Johnny stumbled to his feet. If consternation was the portion of the others, stupefaction was his. He looked blank, abashed, almost frightened. The fingers of one hand played nervously with the buttons on his coat.
"I think," he began with trembling voice, "that there must be a mistake"
"Not a bit of it," roared a voice. Oh, but the room was rising to scratch beautifully.
"There is a mistake," Johnny cried, for once in his life positive. "I don't want to be president. I wouldn't know how to do things. This is all Praska's work. He came to my house last night, and he got to talking about ballots—you know how he is when he starts talking something like that—and he said it was a mistake because anybody might win, and I said I knew I wouldn't win because I wouldn't even vote for myself because I'd mess everything if I were president. And then he said he could go out and get me enough votes to elect me. I didn't know what he would do, and I was afraid he might do something, and I told him if he got me all the votes I wouldn't be president."
Johnny had run out of breath. The room, leaning forward so as not to miss a word, waited for him to go on.
"Then Praska said 'You don't think you could get a vote. Now, if I got you a lot of votes wouldn't that prove that the way this election is being run, fellows could cook up something and win with a secret candidate?' I said yes, I guessed that would prove it. He said none of us wanted that kind of an election, and I said no, we didn't. And he asked me if he could try to get votes for me just to show how things can happen. I told him he could, but I only told him that because I didn't think he'd get any, and I told him I wouldn't be president if he did get me the votes.
"He went away then, and came back after a while, and said perhaps he ought to drop it because he was going to get votes by making the fellows think they were playing a joke on me and maybe that wouldn't be square to me. I told him I didn't care what he did because he wouldn't get any votes anyway. And then he went away again."
"That was like George," Perry reflected, "going back and trying to tell Johnny just what he meant to say. And I'll bet Johnny was sick and tired of ballots and wouldn't listen to him. George wouldn't go out and humiliate a fellow just to get a laugh." He stared at the ceiling and called himself a fool.
"I told Praska I wouldn't be president," Johnny went on. "You can ask him. I can't do the things a president would have to do. I must—I must—." He stuttered and paused, unable to find the word.
"You mean you're going to decline?" came from the rear of the room.
"Decline," he said eagerly; "that's it. Yes; I want to decline. I—I'm not the kind of fellow to be president."
They gave Johnny another cheer then—not a cheer of thanksgiving because he would not take the place, but a cheer of appreciation. There was an unexpected manliness about his speech, and it had won them. Praska, watching the room, heaved a breath of relief, and a worry that had tormented him vanished. The fellows would never tell Johnny the real reason they had voted for him. Not one of them would hurt his feelings.
"This," said Mr. Banning, "is rather an unusual state of affairs. It would seem that the next highest candidate for president"
"Mr. Chairman," said Praska, "I cannot consider myself the choice of the room. I received only thirteen votes. Therefore, I, too, must decline to serve. I think that the only fair way to clear up this situation would be to hold another election. If we are to discuss how that election is to be held"
"Do you think it necessary?" Mr. Banning asked dryly.
Praska was persistent. "In any event," he said, "I move you that we elect a week from to-day, that every candidate file a formal petition by next Thursday, and that the room typewrite an official ballot and make it the only ballot that can be voted."
He stood there by the teacher's desk and every eye was on him—eyes that accused, and berated, and threatened, and yet were a bit proud of him. All over the room boys were stampeding noisily to their feet and demanding instant recognition from the chair. But it was Perry King who won the floor.
"I guess," he said, "that we can see the point when somebody sticks it into us. I second the motion."
"It has been moved and seconded," said Mr. Banning—and proceeded to state the motion, very deliberately. There was a quizzical look on his face all the time that threatened to become a broad smile as he asked "Is there any discussion?"
"He's got a joke on all of us somehow," whispered Littlefield, the end, to Hammond, the captain. "He looks like a cat that's swallowed a canary and is just ready to burst into song."
"Shut up, foolish!" Hammond rebuked him. "Look who's up wanting to talk. Bet it's the first time little Danny Dunn ever talked in meeting in his life."
Hammond was right. Danny had never so far mastered his bashfulness before. But something in Mr. Banning's deliberation and his quizzical smile had struck the boy as a challenge that could not be ignored; and there he was on his feet, forgetting to address the chair, stammering and hesitating, but somehow getting out words that brought a look of keen satisfaction to Mr. Banning's face.
"But, fellows," little Dunn was saying, "you don't have to go to such a lot of work as Praska's prepared ballot just to make elections safe. There's an easier way. You can"
"Aw, cut it out, Danny," interrupted a voice. "We're kind of fed up on easy ways. I'm for—"
"Order in the room. Mr. Dunn has the floor," came from the Chair.
"There's an easier way," Danny's embarrassed voice persisted. "I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner, or why some of you didn't. It never came into my head until last night when I was talking to Dad about the election and Praska's wanting a prepared ballot, and Dad reminded me of the easier way and guyed me for being such a bonehead I hadn't thought of it myself."
"We'll all be dead before Danny gets down to telling his easy way," muttered Littlefield to Hammond. "Say, look at Mr. Banning. He's hep right now to what Danny's trying to tell."
"Shut up," growled Hammond again.
Dunn was rushing on. "There aren't so very many of us, only about sixty. Why don't we just have nominations in open meeting, and then when we get enough good men put up, we can close the nominations. That's a lot less trouble than a prepared ballot, and it's almost as good for a small group."
Praska, slow to think, had no immediate answer to this unexpected challenge, but Perry, still standing, bowed imperturbably, and said: "Mr. Chairman!"
"Mr. King!"
"I'm in favor of putting Mr. Praska's motion to the vote. And I hope it will carry, too. I realize that Mr. Dunn has suggested another very safe way of conducting elections, but it isn't quite so good as Mr. Praska's because it doesn't give you so long to think over candidates, and it doesn't provide against electing a man who doesn't want the job and won't take it. Of course, if the man is at the meeting, he can declare that he won't be a candidate, but suppose he isn't at the meeting? I know that wouldn't happen more than about twice in a lifetime, but now I'm all for the very safest kind of nominations and elections there is on the market as far as Room 13 is concerned."
Perry paused and a hearty round of applause told him that he had the majority in the room with him. Several, however, were grinning at him meaningly. Among those were the nine who had voted with Praska for a prepared ballot.
"All right, grin," Perry snapped at them, forgetful again of time and place. "I'll admit George showed us something about playing safe that we needed to know, but just the same he had to lie to do it—told a whole bunch of us that each was the one to cast just one vote for Baffin, and that only he and the fellow who was to do the job would know anything about the plan."
"So he did," murmured Hammond.
Perry plunged on. "You're some thinker, George Praska; I'll admit that. And you're some liar, too!"
"Mr. Chairman!" Praska was on his feet, flushed, dead earnest. "King got this wrong. I'm no liar. If you call me a liar, then you've got to call all actors liars because what they say on the stage isn't so. All I did was to act a part to make clear an idea that I hadn't been able to get across to the crowd in any other way." He turned to Perry, his eyes hurt. "You'll have to take that back," he said very quietly.
"I sure will." Perry was a quick thinker—he had followed Praska's argument and his response came instantly and with a heartiness that took the hurt out of Praska's eyes.
With sublime indifference to conventional parliamentary procedure the two shook hands warmly.
"George," said Perry, "you're a schemer, and a plotter, and a betrayer, and a conspirator—but you're as straight as a string, and you've got the best bean of any of us. I guess we'll have to elect you president."
From the back of the room came the voice of the football captain. "Yes," Hammond boomed, "I'd like to boil you in oil, George, but I guess we'll have to elect you."