“I move so, too,” said Harry excitedly.
“You mean you second the motion,” Chub corrected. “Question, Mr. President!”
“I guess we’ll worry along without parliamentary procedure,” laughed Dick. “And I don’t believe it will be necessary yet awhile to keep the minutes. Here’s the subscription list. I’ve put my name down for fifty dollars. You two sign, and get Roy to. Then you had better keep it, Harry. Now, are we going to take in more members or keep this thing to ourselves? I’m in favor of having just us four, because if we have a lot it will be hard to get anything done; the fellows will always be wanting to speak and ask questions and all that. What do you say?”
“Four’s enough,” said Chub. And Harry nodded concurrence.
“All right. Now I’ve been asking questions, and I’ve found that Burgess Hall cost twenty-seven thousand dollars. But it was built twelve years ago, and Mr. Cobb says labor and materials have almost doubled in cost since then. If that’s so Burgess would cost about forty-five thousand to-day; but the new dormitory wouldn’t have to be more than half as large because it would have to accommodate only twenty fellows, and wouldn’t have to have a dining-room. But I think it ought to be built in such a way that it could be added to later. I’ve been figuring for a while on the thing, and I think we’ll need just about what I said the other day, thirty thousand.”
“Well, let’s have enough while we’re about it,” said Chub dryly. “Maybe we’d better say forty thousand.”
“So now the thing to do,” continued Dick, “is to write a letter saying what we’re trying to do, and asking for subscriptions. We’ll have it printed and send it around to the grads. I guess we can get hold of their names all right, for the Doctor must have a list of them somewhere.”
“Yes, he has,” said Harry. “There’s a big book of names and addresses in the office.”
“But it’ll cost something for printing and postage, won’t it?” asked Chub.