Two large boys swung a little negro back and forth, head down, commanding him to sing. Too frightened to emit a sound he finally wriggled away from them and fled like a rabbit, with a dozen yelling buffoons after him.
A third group crowned a tiny girl with evergreen, lifted her to their close-touching shoulders, and paraded with her around the open space, shouting, “Madam President!” “I rise to a point of order!” “I have the floor—” “No, no! It’s the ground!” and a lot more nonsense.
The pranks went on while those in charge conferred apart upon the question of handling the mob, each in turn bolstering the courage of the rest.
“Gee whiz! I didn’t expect any of the real thing—voters and mamas,” Redtop panted as he lunged back after his inauspicious beginning. “What are we to do?”
“If we fizzle out, the girls will never stop guying us,” Sis Jones groaned; “they toted almost as many benches as we did.”
“Get a girl to start the meeting; they’re keen on it, and maybe the fellows wouldn’t give it to a girl so—so in the neck.”
“Where’s Hec? What does he say?”
“I say we’ve got to beat that crowd into respect, or not only the Progressives will lose their election, but we’ll lose ours.”
“But this is no meeting for the student body,” Redtop urged.
“No. But Barney and Buckman and their crowd know that nearly every one who will vote for me is mixed up in this playground fight on the side of the Progressives. The Good Citizens’ Club stands for the Progressives too.”