the meeting proceeded
to poll for the candidates, and it was announced that the Whig had got
15,999 votes (there were just 16,000 inhabitants in Shellport), and the
Radical only one (polled by himself), the applause would become simply
deafening.

Even the seniors, in a more dignified way, took up the Whig cause, and
wore the Whig colours; and woe betide the rash boy who sported the
opposition badge!

The juniors were hardly the boys to let an occasion like this slip, and
many and glorious were the demonstrations in which they engaged. They
broke out into a blaze of yellow, and insisted on wearing their colours
even in bed. Pringle was a regular hero, and cheered whenever he showed
his face; whereas Brown, the town boy, whose father was suspected of
being a Radical, was daily and almost hourly mobbed till his life became
a burden to him. All other distinctions and quarrels were forgotten in
this enthusiastic and glorious outburst of patriotic feeling.

Two days before the election a mass meeting of juniors and Limpets of
all houses and ages, summoned by proclamation, was held in a corner of
the playground, "to hear addresses by the candidates, and elect a member
for Shellport." Pringle, of course, was to figure as his distant uncle,
and upon the unhappy Bosher had fallen the lot of assuming the unpopular
_role_ of Mr Cheeseman. The meeting, though only professing to be a
juniors' assembly, attracted a good many seniors also, whose curiosity
and sense of humour were by no means disappointed at the proceedings.

The chairman, Parson, standing on the top of two cricket-boxes, with a
yellow band round his hat, a yellow rosette on each side of his jacket,
and a yellow tie round his neck, said they were met to choose a member,
and knew who was their man. (Loud cheers for "Pringle.") "They didn't
want any Radical cads--(cheers)--and didn't know what they wanted down
here." (Cheers.) (Bosher: "_I_ don't want to be a Radical, you
know.")--(Loud cries of "Shut up!" "Turn him out!") He'd like to know
what that young ass Curtis was grinning at? He'd have him turned out if
he had any of his cheek. He always suspected Curtis was a Radical.
(Curtis: "No, I'm not--I'm for Pony.") There, he knew he was, because
Radicals always told crams! Whereat Parson resumed the level ground.
Pringle, who had about as much idea of public speaking as he had of
Chinese, was then hoisted up on to the platform amid terrific applause.

He