... THEN A LULL DURING CLASS.
"I numbered them off as they voted, and I could see that things were going darkly and suspiciously for our friend the Lobster. 'What do you think of it?' says Pellams. He was getting excited. 'We didn't know our power, did we? Look at the votes he's rolling up. Say, we're corkers and never knew it!' A few classes from the respectable part of the Quad, where they do Political Science, came drifting along then with votes for Castleton, and it went Castleton for awhile; then a lull during class, followed by a scattering vote for Boggs. It was about an even thing during eleven-thirty break, with Castleton still ahead. The frat votes fell in bunches in the biggest rush at noon; I could catch old Boggsie's name marked on most of them, but Castleton was full fifty to the good then. I bolted lunch with Pellams at his house and came back to the Quad. Things were beginning to happen. People I never heard of, the kind of bird that floats in and out on the train and probably doesn't know there is a Student-Body with troubles of its own; digs, crawling out into the light, blinking away at the line; Laboratory fiends in squads, actually losing twenty minutes of precious credit,—the darndest crowd of resurrected stiffs the Quad ever saw, strung out from the registrar's office to the polls, every last one of them squeezing a ballot properly marked ahead, all looking as if it were a conferring of degrees, serious as hell, you know, and the eye of the Brown girl or of one of her crowd fastened on each of them. Poor Castleton, he was a goner! His heelers got up against this line of sphinxes and fell back, done up. It was two o'clock and after; still the vote rolled up. At two-thirty they closed shop, and Pellams and I fell on each other's chests behind a pillar, and busted at the josh on ourselves.
"Then we went over to get the figures of our triumph. 'Boggs, 402; Castleton, 375,' and the biggest vote in the history of the office. Well, you bet we went down to the train! Couldn't freeze us out! We were going to pry open the Lobster's claws and use them for a corkscrew. So we piled into a 'bus. But, honest, we were paralyzed.
"Down at the station was the conquering Brown with her people, all watching for the train. Say, when Boggsie saw the whole gang of us, he was a balloon. He got up on a truck and made us a speech of thanks. Pellams and I yelled 'Hear, Hear,' right along. Oh, it was awful! He gave us the whole history of the Student-Body from the days of 'Ninety-one up. Finally Pellams couldn't stand it any longer and called out, 'Good boy, Boggsie. How about that feed?' and Boggsie waved his hand like a Tuesday evening spieler and said, 'I have provided for that, ladies and gentlemen. Miss Brown, my cousin, invites you all down to her home in Palo Alto for a little refreshment. Everyone is welcome.'
"I had to pick my fat friend up. Boggsie's getting out of the whole thing without spending a bean knocked him cold. But he got his wind later. You ought to have heard his speech down there at the house, with a plate of melted strawberry muck in one hand and a glass of sour in the other, replying to Boggsie's vote of thanks to us two, and skinning his face at the Brown girl. Oh, it was a peach!"