Humphrey was waiting when Ira returned from supper. “Thought I might as well go along and see the fun,” he observed carelessly.

They reached the auditorium, on the second floor of Parkinson Hall, in good time but found it already half-full. A dozen rather conscious-looking fellows stood or sat about the stage: Fred Lyons, De Wolf Lowell, Gene Goodloe, the four class presidents, Steve Crocker, baseball captain, and several whom Ira didn’t know. Mr. Driscoll, followed by Billy Goode, the trainer, came in a few minutes later and joined the assemblage on the stage. There was a good deal of noise in the hall, for everyone was talking or laughing. It was evident not only that about every fellow in school was to be on hand but that they were here principally with the idea of finding amusement. Ira and Humphrey found seats on the left about midway between the stage and the green swinging doors with the oval lights at the other end of the auditorium. By five minutes to eight all the seats were occupied and a fringe of boys lined the wall at the back. Ira saw several of the faculty in the audience: Mr. Morgan, Mr. Talbot and Mr. Tasser. Their presence was easily explained since they were the faculty members of the Athletic Committee.

At eight by the big, round clock over the stage, Hodges, fourth class president, who had evidently accepted the office of chairman, arose and the noise quieted to furtive scraping of feet or coughing. Hodges explained unemotionally the purpose of the meeting and introduced Lowell. The best feature of Hodges’ introduction was its brevity, and the best feature of the manager’s talk was doubtless its strict attention to facts and figures. He undoubtedly showed conclusively that the Football Association was sadly in need of funds; the figures which he paraded proved it; but figures and facts are dull things and by the time he had finished the quiet had gone. Many fellows were whispering behind their hands and many others were frankly yawning. Ira knew that they needed stirring up and hoped that the next speaker would do it. But the next was Fred Lyons, and although Fred wanted very much to make an appeal that would reach his audience, he failed most dismally. Perhaps it was because he wanted to do it too hard that he couldn’t. His earnestness was convincing enough, but it so closely approached solemnity that it was better calculated to produce tears than enthusiasm. Fred apologised for the poor showing made by the team in recent years and made the mistake, possibly, of placing a share of the blame on the lack of support supplied by the school. No audience cares to listen to a recital of its shortcomings unless it is in a particularly sympathetic mood, and this one wasn’t. Fred asked the school to get behind the team, to believe in it and to aid it.

“It’s your team and it will do what you want it to if you will give it support. It can’t win without that support. We’ve got good players and a fine coach, and we’re all eager to do our best, fellows. But we need your help, moral and financial. Manager Lowell has told you how we stand regarding money. Last season was a poor one financially and we started this year with a practically empty treasury. So far we have managed to worry along from one game to the next, but we need a lot of supplies, we owe money for printing and we owe Mr. Driscoll half his salary. What Lowell didn’t tell you is that he has dug into his own pocket several times, just as I have, for that matter, in order to keep going. Comparatively few season tickets have been taken this year, nearly eighty less than last, and the attendance at the games, with one exception, has been poor. We need money, fellows, quite a lot of money, and I’m hoping you will give it to us. And we need even more; to feel that you are behind us and want us to come through. If you will do your part we’ll do ours, every one of us, players, coach, management and trainer. I think that’s all I have to say. Thank you.”

Fred sat down amidst a salvo of applause, but Ira somehow knew that his address had not carried conviction and that the applause was for Fred personally rather than for his appeal. And Fred’s countenance said that he realised the fact.

Coach Driscoll spoke briefly, dwelling on the ability of the team and the spirit of it and paying a tribute to Captain Lyons that again brought applause. He ended by echoing Fred’s request for support and stepped back to a hearty clapping of hands. Gene Goodloe did his best, but Gene was sadly out of his element. His embarrassment was so evident that it brought a ripple of laughter, and Ira had hopes. But Gene made the mistake of resenting it and finished his remarks amidst a deep and discouraging silence. Others followed, but the first speakers had, so to say, sounded the tone of the meeting and each succeeding speaker seemed more lugubrious than the last. Feet shuffled impatiently and many eyes were fixed longingly on the doors. A few of those near the entrance had already slipped away. The meeting was proving long-drawn-out and dismal to a degree. Audible remarks began to be heard, such as: “Pass the hat and call it a day!” “Question, Mr. Speaker! Question!” “Let’s have a song!” It was Hodges who, recognising the attitude of the audience, tried to induce Billy Goode to say something. But Billy resolutely refused to be dragged from his chair, even though the audience, scenting possible relief from the dead solemnity of the proceedings, clapped loudly and demanded a speech. In the end, Hodges gave the trainer up and took the floor himself.

“Well, you’ve heard us all, fellows. You know what is wanted of you. So let’s get down to business. We’ve got some slips here and some pencils and some of us are going to pass them around to you in a minute. I hope every fellow will contribute. The Association needs about three hundred dollars to get to the Kenwood game with. That means that some of us must give liberally. But before we start the collection perhaps there’s someone that would like to say something. If there is let’s hear from him. Debate is open.”

No one, however, seemed to have any message to deliver, although there was plenty of whispering and subdued laughter. Finally, though, a tall, lean youth with an earnest manner arose at one side of the hall and cleared his throat nervously. Hodges recognised him and sat down.

“Who’s the giraffe?” whispered Humphrey. Ira shook his head.

“Mr. President—er—Chairman, and Fellow Students,” began the earnest one. “I’ve listened carefully to what has been said and as near as I can see it doesn’t amount to much.” Some applause and a good deal of laughter rewarded him. “This football team of ours needs money to go on with, they tell us,” continued the speaker, encouraged by the applause, “but I ask them: Why? This is an age of efficiency, gentlemen, and when something is proven inefficient it is discarded. Seems to me this football team has proved itself about as inefficient as anything could be. Seems to me a football team’s excuse for existence is—er—is winning games. If that’s so, this football team of ours stopped being efficient three years ago. I ask you what use there is in contributing money for the benefit of something that has outlived its usefulness. I claim that it’s poor business, gentlemen. I maintain——”

But he didn’t get any further, for the audience was laughing and shouting its applause by that time. At last someone had waked them up! The idea of discarding the team appealed to their sense of humour and while the tall youth went on making faces and waving his hands the audience gave way to hilarity.

“Good scheme! Discharge the team!”

“Pay ’em off and let ’em go!”

“No wins, no wages! How about it, Fred?”

On the stage the fellows were smiling, but not very comfortably. Fred Lyons was whispering to Lowell, and the latter was shaking his head helplessly. Somewhere in the back of the hall a second speaker was demanding recognition and there was a general craning of necks as Hodges rapped for order. Someone pulled the long-necked youth to his chair, still talking and gesticulating.

“Mr. Chairman!” began the new speaker, “I want to say that most of us fellows would support the football team if it would show itself worth supporting. Isn’t that so, fellows?”

Laughing agreement arose about him.

“That team hasn’t won anything worth winning for so long that no one remembers what it was they won. They talk about wanting three hundred dollars. Well, maybe they do. But I say let them show something first. This school is just as loyal to its teams as any school, but it wants something for its money. I say let’s give the team a hundred dollars now and tell them to earn the rest!”

“That’s right!” someone called. “We’re from Missouri!”

A young, second class fellow jumped up and declared in a thin, high voice that he “seconded the motion.” Hodges rapped for silence.

“No motion has been put. If you want to put a motion we will vote on it. But I must say that many of you are wrong when you think this is a vaudeville show. Please try to talk sense. Are there any more remarks?”

There were several, but they weren’t serious and the speakers didn’t stand up. Hodges looked slowly around the hall and then turned toward the table beside him.

“If there aren’t,” he announced, “we will proceed with the purpose of the meeting.”

“Mr. Chairman!”

“Mister—” The chairman paused, at a loss, and Fred Lyons whispered across to him—“Mr. Rowland?”

Ira, on his feet, conscious of Humphrey’s wide-open mouth and of the four hundred and more curious gazes, moistened his lips and took a deep breath. He had acted quite on impulse, which was something he seldom did do, and he was still a bit surprised to find himself standing there facing the meeting.

“Shoot!” called someone, and many laughed.

“Mr. Chairman and—and fellows,” began Ira slowly, “I——”

“Louder!” came a demand from the back of the auditorium.

Ira made a new start, facing so that he could make himself heard at the back of the hall. “I want to tell a story,” he said.

“Naughty! Naughty!” cried a facetious youth.

Ira smiled. “It’s about a horse race. Down in Maine, where I come from, there was an old man who owned a horse.” There was a nasal twang in his voice that brought chuckles from many and smiles of anticipated amusement from more. “She wasn’t much of a horse, fellows. She was about fourteen years old, and her front knees sorter knocked together and she had the spring-halt in the left hind leg and she was blind in one eye and couldn’t see any too well outer the other. And she was fat and she was lazy because this man I’m telling about didn’t use her except to drive to the village once a week in an old rattletrap buckboard to get a pound of coffee and a sack of flour and so on. Well, one time when he was in the village he saw a notice about a trotting meeting to be held at the Fair Grounds a week or so later. So all the way home that day he talked it over with Old Bess and she switched her tail and flicked her ears and between them they decided to enter the race. So he went in to the village again and put down his entry fee and borrowed an old sulky of Peters, the blacksmith. It wasn’t a very good sulky to look at, but Peters put a new rim on one wheel and tied some baling wire around it here and there and the old man hitched it on back of the buckboard and fetched it home. And every day after that you’d see him and Old Bess jogging along the turnpike.

“Well, it came the day of the meeting and the old man and Bess went to the Fair Grounds. There was a heap of betting going on and the old man he strolled around and strolled around and pretty soon he’d met about everyone he knew and he didn’t have a red cent left in his pockets, and he calculated that if Old Bess won he’d be about fifteen hundred dollars to the good, because everyone he laid a bet with gave him perfectly scandalous odds. When it came Old Bess’s time he drove out on the track and everyone howled and the judges got down out of the stand and asked him to go away and keep the peace. But he wouldn’t listen to ’em and so they had to let Old Bess start. And that’s about all she did do. Once on a time she’d been a pretty good trotter, but that was a long way off, and maybe the old man didn’t realise it. There was just the one heat for Old Bess. When the other horses started she switched her tail once or twice, looked around over her shoulder and jogged away. Pretty soon they met the other horses coming back, but Old Bess didn’t take any notice of ’em. She just jogged on. And after awhile a man came running up to them and asked wouldn’t they please get off the track because they were starting the next heat. And so the old man he turned Old Bess around and she jogged back. And that’s all there was to it. But one of the men that had laid a bet with the old man was sorter sorry for him, guessing he was just about cleaned out, and he said: ‘Old Man, ain’t you got nary sense at all? Didn’t you know that horse o’ yourn had spring-halt and epizootics and was knock-kneed in front and fallin’ away behind?’ ‘Why, yes,’ replied the old man, ‘I knowed that, I guess.’ ‘An’ you knew she was fourteen or fifteen years old, didn’t you?’ ‘Ought to, I lived right with her all the time.’ ‘An’ you knew she was stone-blind in one eye, didn’t you?’ ‘Yes, I knowed that, too.’ ‘An’ you knew she was too fat, anyway, didn’t you?’ ‘I sorter suspected it.’ ‘Well, then why in tarnation did you bet on her for?’ ‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ says the old man. ‘She’s my horse, an’ what’s mine I stands back of. An’ win or not win, she’s the finest horse an’ the fastest trotter in the State o’ Maine! Get ap, Bess!’”

Ira sat down.

The clapping and stamping and laughter might have been heard across on Faculty Row. It went on and on, and Hodges, smiling broadly as he pounded his gavel, might just as well have been hitting a feather bed with a broom-straw!

“Get up!” urged Humphrey. “Go on! They want more!”

“There isn’t any more,” said Ira, smiling. “And they don’t need any more.”

And maybe they didn’t, for it was a vastly different gathering that scrambled for the slips of paper and put down figures and names. Perhaps tomorrow or still later some of them would regret the size of the figures, but just now they were in the mood to be generous, for Ira’s story had succeeded where all the rest of the oratory had failed. They still chuckled as they passed the slips along and were still smiling when the pledges were dumped on the table. Among them was one which bore the inscription “$2.00—Humphrey Nead.”

The meeting broke up then, but most of the audience waited until those on the stage had hurriedly reckoned up the pledges, and when Hodges held up his hand for silence and announced the total to be three hundred and forty-one dollars they cheered loudly and long. And when Steve Crocker pushed past Hodges and called for “a regular cheer for the Team, fellows, and make it good!” the result indicated that Parkinson School had experienced a change of heart!