Boggs saw, or thought he did, and went to town, ostensibly to carry out a commission for Pellams, but not before he had rallied some of his constituents and given them final instructions. It was wonderful to see what a variety of tastes and interests were represented. An older politician would have scented danger from the fact that so many of them had never come out into the arena before; but Jimmy only looked with smiling curiosity on the Ethics major or the Education "shark," dug up somewhere from their abstruse speculations.
It was on their way to the station that Jimmy touched on the remaining issue of the campaign which he was managing.
"You remember my speaking about a feed the other day? I ought to have spoken more fully, but I've been busy with other details."
"You know the custom," cut in the conspirator; "it will be expected of you if you get the office; it ought to come off to-night to be done properly."
"That will all be attended to," said Boggs calmly.
"There'll be a lot of them; they will meet you at the train and you'll have to do it in shape. I can lend you a little."
"Thanks, old man," said the victim, squeezing Mason's arm, "but just you leave that to me. It's all arranged to do the square thing by the people who have stood in with me. So long. Look out for me, won't you? I'll be down on the Flyer."
When Jimmy got back to the Quadrangle there was a shifting mass about the polls. Encina politicians were there, Palo Alto politicians, serious-looking fellows from the Camp, and spruce ones from the Row. Castleton's followers stood in groups, looking smug and confident, while sour-faced Higgins people were revengefully putting in all their work for Boggs.
Every election has its Mark Hanna; this time it was Jennie Brown, whom Pellams knew as "Boggsie's dig girl cousin." She was the silent spirit of the whole Boggs campaign. Mason, in telling the story of it afterward, said:
"Pellams and I were there when the polls opened. That girl was on hand, too, with a gang of Palo Alto girls all ready to start things for Boggsie. Well, you ought to have seen her. Heaven help us and our masculine schemes if they get women suffrage and the Brown lives. At ten-thirty in the first rush she steered a whole Education class, worked them beautifully past Castleton's hungry heelers, right up to the ballot-box. _She_ wasn't working combinations; it cut no ice with her how they voted for managers, and treasurers and editors, so long as they were solid for Lorenzo Boggs.