Laughlin took his seat, wiping his heated face. His followers sat dismayed, almost indignant that he should suddenly desert them at the last moment. The Butlerites whispered together in doubt, and cursed the Ware nomination as a boomerang, an idiot’s trick. Without it their man would be alone, and the office would be his. Then the door opened, and Ware, muffled to his ears in an ulster, his face pale from several days’ confinement to his room, shuffled with Morgan’s help to a position near the front.
“Mr. Chairman,” he began in a weak voice.
“Mr. Ware.”
“I understand that I have been nominated here to-night for president of the class. I have given no one permission to use my name in this way; I positively decline to be a candidate. Whoever nominated me did it without my authority for the purpose of drawing votes from a better candidate. It’s a mean trick which I hope won’t succeed. I withdraw my name in favor of Laughlin.”
Ware sat down and unbuttoned his heavy coat. The partisans of both sides stared at each other in silence; the less serious began to snicker; the plot was becoming too complicated to unravel. A grinning supporter of Butler leaned forward and called jeeringly to the waiting Ware:—
“Laughlin declined long ago, you Rip van Winkle. Go home and go to sleep again.”
Instantly Ware straightened up. “Who are the nominees, then?”
“No one but Butler,” replied the jubilant heeler. “He’s got it all his own way.”
Ware did not hesitate a moment. “Mr. Chairman,” he called, rising eagerly, “are the nominations closed?”
“They are not,” returned the presiding officer.