He read:
“Strictly private information not yet made public. President Galt will resign to take effect next term. He goes on retirement at full salary. Trustees to engineer a monster farewell dinner of alumni. He goes out covered with laurels. Says he recognizes time to make a climax of his life-work and will leave the working out of the new plans to younger hands. He is not unfavorable to you as his successor. Straw vote of board shows you to be the candidate of majority for presidency. Come to Holden immediately. Don’t see anybody; don’t decide anything. Above all, don’t talk. Remember you know nothing. Wire.
“Diccon.”
“How perfectly splendid!” exclaimed Mrs. Levering.
The other members of the group looked like a trio of sentenced convicts.
“How can you say that, mother!” Kate spoke sharply. “Everything was so lovely—and now there’ll be no Top-o’-the-Hill.”
“It’s beastly,” snapped Gorgas. “I hate Holden; always did. Squabbling, little, petty kid-factory.”
“It’s awful!” murmured the candidate of a majority of the trustees.
But eventually they talked off their disappointment and began to see things from a less personal point of view. Blynn showed them the absurdity of his own qualifications; there were other men in the faculty to whom the elevation would be not only welcome but deserving.
“I am an accident,” he went on. “I got into the limelight. I took other men’s ideas and had the spokesman rôle. Everybody understood; I made no secret of it. Some folks can talk and others can’t. That’s all there is to it.... I suppose I’m a dramatic sort of chap. Diccon says I am. I get heated up with enthusiasm, the preacher in me comes to the front, and I splutter figures of speech.... In my lectures it comes out, and when I get the most applause,” he bowed his head, “I am the most ashamed. I like to thrill ’em, work the stops, soft pedal, vox humana and all that. I don’t mean to play on their feelings. I am honest with my own feelings but—there’s the trouble!—I do have feelings; and I show ’em.