'What do you think, Mr. Elliott, that B.-P. would say if he was here?'
Mr. Elliott smiled, and shook his head. He was not to be drawn that way.
'I'll tell you this much, Billy,' he remarked, 'that I think he would do exactly as I am doing—leave it to the patrol. The very foundation of the thing, you know, is to teach you to stand on your own legs.'
'Why not vote upon the question?' suggested Dick Elliott; and the idea was received with a burst of applause.
'Yes,' said Mr. Elliott, 'that's a good plan. Hold a secret ballot, so that every member of the patrol may feel quite free to express his real feelings. We can soon arrange that.'
He took a sheet of plain foolscap from his writing-table, and carefully divided it into eight equal pieces, and gave each boy a piece. From the mantelshelf he took a tall china vase, and placed that on the writing-table.
'Now,' said he, 'I propose that each of you shall go out in turn to the hall table. There you will mark your papers. A circle means that the voter is willing to meet the boys from Skinner's Hole in friendly contest; a cross means that he is not willing. When a paper is marked it will be folded across the middle with the mark inside, brought back, and dropped into the vase. In that way the ballot will be perfectly secret, and you may freely express your feelings.'
There was deep silence as the boys voted in turn according to their patrol numbers. The party in the study kept their backs to the writing-table, so that a voter was not even seen to drop his paper in, and within five minutes the eight votes were in the vase which served as ballot-box.
The boys looked on eagerly as Mr. Elliott fetched the vase after No. 8 had voted and returned to the group of his comrades.
'First of all,' said Mr. Elliott, 'I shall shake the vase well, so that the papers may be thoroughly mixed up.'