“Yes, that’s easy enough to say,” whispered Warton to Smithson. “He’s used to speaking in public. I always feel as if my heart’s getting into my mouth.”
“Mr Fullerton, I think, wishes to address you, gentlemen,” said the Rector, smiling and sitting down.
Mr Fullerton looked as if he would have liked to strangle the Rector for that smile. It was a perfectly innocent smile, in no wise directed at the would-be speaker, but it seemed to Fullerton that the Rector was ridiculing him, and it put him off his text for the moment, but he recovered himself, and in a very florid speech, full of wanderings from the point, opposed the appointment of a new master on the ground that Humphrey Bone having been duly nominated and appointed, unless he had in some special way become unfit for his post, the Rector had no right to dismiss him.
Mr Bone uttered a very loud “Hear, hear!”
Two more of the townsmen, followers of Fullerton, rose in turn to speak, but were silenced on the spot by the announcement of the Rector, that this was not an ordinary meeting of ratepayers, but of the governors of the school, who alone had a right to make any motion and speak to the proposition before the meeting.
This being so, Tomlinson was forced into action by his neighbour, and in smooth tones regretted that he was compelled to go in opposition to “our worthy Rector,” but, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, he must object to the appointment of so young a man as Mr Luke Ross to so important a post, and after a long speech, in which he went round and round the subject a dozen times, he ended by declaring that he should vote against the appointment.
To his annoyance, the Rector, as the meeting went on, found himself undoubtedly in the minority, and he felt bitterly the position in which Luke Ross had been placed.
Just then, however, a couple of the governors, upon whom he knew that he could depend, entered the room, and the tables, he felt, were turned.
Luke had been sitting, chafing at every word that had been said against his appointment, and every now and then, as he met Cyril Mallow’s eye, it seemed to him to be full of triumph at his discomfiture.
Then, too, he kept glancing at Portlock, and as he did so the bluff, wealthy farmer’s words came back, mingled with the contempt he seemed to feel for the pittance that was to be the young master’s for the first few years.