“Let me go as his substitute,” said Jeffrey with a smile.
“At that you’d get around a heap quicker than some of the fellows who try for the team,” replied Poke. “Well, let’s wash up, Gil. It’s meeting night, you remember.”
“What’s meeting night?” asked Jim.
“Plato Society meets this evening. I’d ask you along, but it’s business meeting to-night. Glad to have you some other time, though; you, too, Latham, if you’d like.”
At supper the household had increased to seven, for Mr. Hanks occupied the seat of honor at Mrs. Hazard’s right. He was introduced to the boys and shook hands with each, smiling in his absentminded way. At first his presence at table rather dampened the spirits of the others, excepting Mrs. Hazard who did her best to make conversation with the newcomer. Her efforts, however, were not very successful. Mr. Hanks replied politely but embarrassedly, showing that he was far more ill at ease than the boys. On the whole, supper was a quiet meal, and almost as soon as it was over Gil and Poke left the house for the meeting.
At Crofton the faculty keeps a gentle but firm hold on the societies by assigning to each a Counsellor, one of the younger faculty members. He is responsible to the Principal for the conduct of his society, although his office is merely an advisory one. Plato’s Counsellor was Mr. Brown, better known as “Brownie,” instructor in Greek and one of the more popular of the faculty members. Plato, like the other three societies, had a home of its own, a small cottage near the campus on Academy Road in charge of an elderly man and his wife who received the rear part of the house rent-free in return for their services as housekeeper and gardener. There was a little yard in front, what Poke called an “open-faced porch”—there being no railing on it—and four downstairs rooms, of which two were used by the society. On the second floor were four bedrooms, occupied principally by visiting friends. The room on the right on the first floor was the Meeting Room, and it was quite ample in size to accommodate the thirty boys who had congregated there this evening.
It was already well filled when Gil and Poke arrived, although the meeting had not yet been called to order. Mr. Brown was the center of a group of fellows which the two new arrivals joined. The instructor had a handshake and a word of welcome for each. Then other friends demanded recognition, and for the next five minutes the hum of talk and laughter filled the square, old-fashioned room. The two windows on the front of the house were wide open, for the flaring gas-jets in the big chandelier were making the room uncomfortably warm. The side windows were kept closed and curtained, for it was not beyond the possibilities that prankish or curious members of a rival society might eavesdrop; such a thing had occurred before now, and the heavy shrubbery outside offered excellent concealment for the enemy. The room was papered with plain gray cartridge paper above the white-painted paneling, and a half-dozen good engravings decorated the walls. There was an oak desk between the front windows with a few straight-backed chairs about it, while some forty folding chairs filled the body of the room. There was no carpet on the floor and the broad mantel was bare of adornment. The apartment, save at commencement time, was used only for business purposes. At commencement the chairs were moved against the wall and visiting relatives and friends took possession and the floor was waxed for dancing.
Presently the president of the Society, Ben Atherton, who was also captain of the crew, rapped on the desk with a little silver-mounted gavel and the fellows took their places. What passed at the meeting we, as outsiders, have no right to know. I do not believe, however, that it was a very important affair, for it lasted less than half an hour. Then the boys trooped into the room across the hall or emerged onto the porch. Banjos, mandolins and guitars were taken from their cases. “Punk” Gibbs seated himself at the piano—a long-suffering instrument constantly in need of tuning—and wandered through some chords while the other musicians, seated around or leaning about it, tuned up.
The Social Room, as they called it, was well and comfortably furnished. There were many brown oak chairs and settles upholstered in dull red leather, some fairly good rugs on the polished floor, a broad couch, filled with cushions—and, just now, with boys as well—in front of the fireplace, a good-sized bookcase moderately well filled and many pictures on the walls. The word picture here means all sorts of things in frames, for there were originals of cover-designs for the school weekly, The Crow, posters of all sorts, drawings and other trophies and mementos, all crowded together in interesting confusion. Visitors to Plato Society found the walls of the Social Room highly amusing.
The room was soon noisy with talk and laughter, the jangle of the piano and the strum-strum of strings. Gil and Poke had found places at one of the windows, which opened clear to the floor, where, seated on cushions, they were in position to see and hear what went on both inside and out. Mr. Brown was on the porch telling an interested group about his summer walking trip through Switzerland. On the big couch in front of the empty fireplace a very hilarious group were recounting their own vacation experiences and, incidentally, “rubbing it into” one youth on whom they apparently had a very good joke. He was grinning in an embarrassed way and half-heartedly retaliating on his chief tormentor with a cushion. Then Gibbs started up “Old Plato” and the banjos and guitars and mandolins, six or seven in all, joined in as best they could. Fingers were stiff, however, from lack of practice, and the music was pretty wobbly at first. But by the time Gibbs had reached the refrain the orchestra was doing fairly well, and when the pianist started over again, first one voice and then another began the words, and presently the whole assemblage was singing the Society Song. It wasn’t an especially edifying production, but it went with a swing and Platonians had sung it for years.