“Look here,” he said finally, “I want you to promise me something, Dan. Promise me to vote for yourself whether you get that other vote or not. Will you? You see, you can’t tell until the count how many votes you’ve got, and you’d feel pretty sore afterwards if you discovered that you’d missed it by one vote that you might have given yourself.”
“That’s so, Dan,” agreed Alf. “You’d better do it anyway.”
“All right, I will.”
“And, Dan,” went on Tom sleepily as he took up his book again, “let me know Wednesday morning how things stand, will you?”
“Yes, if I don’t forget.”
“Just try and remember. I—I’m awfully interested in school politics and—er—elections and—” His voice died away. Dan smiled across at Alf, but Alf was regarding Tom with a puzzled, thoughtful expression on his face.
[CHAPTER VII]
THE ELECTION
Room F was one of the larger recitation rooms in Oxford, a rectangular, high-ceilinged apartment, with tall windows along one side and a dismal expanse of blackboard occupying most of the remaining wall space. There were some thirty seats, and a small platform at one end supported a desk and chair. On Wednesday, at a few minutes before three in the afternoon, Room F was well filled and the corridor outside was noisy with the sound of voices and the tramping of feet. The First and Third Classes were holding or were about to hold their elections in neighboring rooms, and there was quite a little excitement in the air. It was the Second Class election, however, that aroused the most interest. Usually the elections are cut-and-dried affairs, but Dan’s appearance in the race had raised the contest out of the humdrum level, and even Second Class fellows who were not Cambridge members had caught the excitement and were waiting in the corridors to learn the result.