“All in favour,” said the first voice. “On the contrary? Carried unanimously and nem. con. Jack” (turning to Mr. Payne), “in you go.”
“In ordinary circs,” said Payne, after he had taken the chair and had risen to some applause, “I’m perfectly well aware that the proper course to pursue at an affair like this is for the chair to call on the secretary to read the minutes of the last meeting. I know that without any of you telling me. But we’re in the position to-night of not ’aving no secretary and not ’aving no previous meetin’.”
The heads around the table nodded agreement. A gloomy man seated in the position that a vice-chairman might have occupied half rose and said, “Mr. Chairman, sir,” and was at once pulled back into his chair by those near him.
“I was never a man,” went on the Chairman, his forehead damp with nervousness, “to what you may call force me opinions on any body of men. ’Cepting once, and that was at New Cross in ’89. I forget exactly what it was about, and I forget who was there, and I forget what I said, but the entire incident is quite fresh in my memory, and, as I say, that was the only occasion on which—”
“Question, question,” cried the gloomy man at the other end of the room. His neighbours hushed him into silence.
“I’m coming to the question as fast as ever I can. Few know better than me how to conduct a meeting of this kind, although I say it p’raps as shouldn’t, because it sounds like flattery, but it ain’t flattery, it’s only the truth. I’ve had it said to me over and over again, not once or twice, but many times—”
“Mr. Chairman, reely,” said the gloomy man, “I must call you to order. We shall never get the business done this side of Chris’mas if—”
“Kindly sed down,” ordered Mr. Payne, in tones of command, “or else resume your seat; one or the other. It’s me,” tapping his waistcoat, “me, sir, that calls people to order, not you.”
The gloomy man argued in a loud whisper with his neighbours, and, on these counselling that he should simmer down, sat back in his chair, surveying the ceiling, his lips closed determinedly.
“First thing is shall we, being all of a trade, form a separate society, or shall we jolly well do the other thing? That’s the point. Now then, who’s going to give us a start? You, my friend, of the Great Eastern, down at the bottom of this left ’and table, you seem to have a lot to say, p’raps we might give you ten minutes and see whether or not there’s any sense in you.”